


The Company:Prologue

by icestorm1196



Series: The Company [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe, Canonical Character Death, Character Death, Child Abuse, F/M, Gen, Hunting is still a thing, Hurt Castiel, Imprisonment, Mary as a caretaker, Prejudice, more tags to follow probably
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-08
Updated: 2014-06-09
Packaged: 2018-02-03 22:10:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 21,293
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1758237
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icestorm1196/pseuds/icestorm1196
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Company is known for tracking, hunting, and killing monsters.  Of course, they also research these monsters before they ultimately execute them.   They have facilities all over the world.  Most people either don’t know about the Company, or they don’t know explicitly what the Company does, other than keep humans safe.</p><p>Mary Winchester works for them as what is essentially a behavioral analyst, helping the Company to better understand the monsters and what makes them tick, to help the hunters better learn how to defeat them.  However, one day, the Company brings in a winged child, no more than three, and she can't help but compare him to her son Dean.  She knows the child only as Angel, and he quickly finds a place in her heart.<br/>The Company is a terrible place for a child though, especially for a monster.  Will he retain any of his humanity in a place designed for destroying that which is different?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Angel

**Author's Note:**

> So. This story might have a passing resemblance to Freak Camp: A Monster by Any Other Name, which you should all read. But that resemblance, I think, begins and ends with the fact that there is a Company that collects Monsters.  
> The human population is by and large unaware that monsters exist.
> 
> This will be Part One of a series. Think of it as a prologue to the main event, which will be much longer. This is sort of getting away from me though, so I figured I'd make it it's own story.

Mary Winchester stared at the small creature, culred up and sobbing in the center of a sizeable cage, coller around it’s neck. A chain stretched from the coller to the bars of the cage, and the creature was as far from the edges of the cage as the chain would comfortably allow it. It cried, huffing out words in a language Mary didn’t know.  
“It’s just a baby,” she said, a little stunned. Her co-worker, Bela, shrugged, tucking a long strand of silky hair back behind her ear.  
“It’s a monster,” she said, voice clipped and cuncaring. “We collect monsters.:  
Mary felt a quickening in her gut, and she absently touched a hand to her stomach. “It can’t be more than, what, three?”  
Bela shrugged again. “How the hell should I know? It’s probably a shifter or something. Trying to trick us into thinking it is innocent.” Bela didn’t trust monsters at all. Not their intentions, not their natures. Mary was more pragmatic. A lot of what monsters did, she knew, was pure instinct, having less to do with a desire to trick and more with a desire to survive. She had brown up hunting them, after all, and the company used her knowledge and experience with all sorts of the creatures they caught. Mostly, she knew, the supernatural creatures tried to stay unobtrusive, out of sight and out of harms way. Sometimes though, they got greedy, or started to feel entitled, or went a bit mad and started killing wantonly, just to kill. That’s when hunters or, Mary had thought, the Company stepped in. But this was just a _child_. He hadn’t hurt anyone. It would have said on his file if he was brought in for hurting or killing a human. But there was nothing. At least, nothing in the file Mary had seen. And she was supposed to see everything, because she was one of the few that had almost exclusive access to all of the monsters in the Company facility. 

 

This child was unknown 009—Winged Classification 2-Bird (As the small tattoo on his arm denoted him U009WC2B. And that was all they knew of him. They weren’t sure quite what he was, only the ninth unclassified monster they’d ever found, two bird-like wings and an extra set of muscles to control them the only things differentiating him from a human child. Mary could see the child. Bela only saw the monster.   
“Well, it certainly has a pair of healthy lungs,” she said, clearly annoyed, her crisp, British tones starting to sound a bit frayed. “Lilith will want it to shut up. Maybe she’ll muzzle it or something.” Mary shot a glare her co-worker’s way. “What?” snapped the other woman before rolling her eyes, and capping her pen. “I’m going to finish my report elsewhere. You’re a mother. Shut it up, or I’ll call Lilith to do it.” She sauntered out of the room, leaving Mary alone with the monster. The child. 

 

She swallowed, and carefully used her key-card to unlock the cage, slipping inside. She closed the door behind her, but didn’t lock it. It was a toddler and chained up besides. Escape wasn’t possible. She sat carefully in front of it. Him.   
“Hey, baby,” she said softly, like she might if her own son, Dean was hurt or scared. “Hey, don’t cry.” Stupid thing to say really, he had lots of reason to cry. But she wasn’t entirely sure he could understand her words, considering that he had yet to speak a word of English, and no one was sure what language he was speaking, It would be best, for the moment, to talk to him like a spooked animal. Calming, using words she’d use for her own child. “It’s alright,” she continued. “But it’s best if you stay quiet, alright?” She reached out a hand tentatively, and touched his head. He flinched away, and her heart ached. What had he been through already in the past two days or so since he’d been caught that he was expecting her to bring pain? She started threading her hand through his baby-soft dark hair. It looked different than Dean’s but it felt the same. It hurt more, she thought, that the two boys were of an age. Maybe they’d even have been friends. If this boy wasn’t a supernatural, anyway. This was going to be hard. Especially if she kept comparing him to Dean. Mary kept up her soothing talk, stroking his hair gently. Soon, the boy started to relax, to calm down. 

 

“Shh, shh,” Mary hushed. She wanted to pick him up, to hold him, but she didn’t dare. She wasn’t even supposed to be in the cage at all, much less helping him feel better. He asked something then, voice hoarse and broken, in that strange language of his. “I don’t know what you are saying, baby,” she said, sadly. “I know it’s got to be scary. In this place with strange people. Poking you and hurting you. I’m sorry baby. “ The boy sniffed.

 

“Mama,” he said, or at least, it sounded like it.

“You want your mother?” asked Mary, heart pounding.. He nodded, breath hitching again. “Do you understand me?” He nodded again, thumb finding its way to his mouth. He watched her now, breath still shuddering through him, choked sobs sporadically wracking his small frame. “Do you speak English?” There was a long pause this time, and he slowly shook his head. “Were you learning.” His eyes, huge and so very blue, filled again, and he nodded, shaking. “That’s okay,” she soothed. “Don’t cry, Angel. Maybe we can teach you, alright? You’ll be able to tell us what you need.” They wouldn’t kill it—him—not until they knew what it was, what it ate, what it was capable of. And hopefully, not even then. It was just a child. He. He was just a baby. 

 

She wasn’t sure how long she sat there, but soon the child-Angel-she called him in her head, was sleeping. She didn’t think it was that long, because after smoothing his red, warm, tear-stained cheek, she stood easily. She’d rather expected to be stiff or achy, but apparently, time had not gone as quickly as she had thought. Mary left the cage, locking it securely behind her. She couldn’t stay in here to fill out her log, not while the boy slept, miserable and frightened on the hard floor of the cage. She wanted to help him. That was odd. She never wanted to really _help_ the monsters. Perhaps it was because this one was so young. She shivered. Whatever it was, she had a bad feeling about the whole situation.

Mary was called to Lilith’s office early the next day, only moments after clocking in. Lilith unnerved Mary, quite a lot. She was the head of the Company, it’s founder and lead proponent. She was ruthless in getting information, though she hid her worse nature with a small smile and a pretty face. Honestly, Mary thought the woman looked a bit alien, but most people did seem to find her attractive. Still, she smiled, but her eyes were cold. Everything about her was like ice. Mary didn’t like her, and she didn’t trust the woman further than she could throw her. Lilith knew this, and it didn’t seem to bother her. That unnerved Mary too. She simply ignored her most of the time. Except, it seemed, today. “Mary Winchester,” she said, with a small, humorless smile. “The logs are quite interesting. What interest have you in U009WC2B? Surely you aren’t getting it confused with a real child?”

Mary swallowed, licked her lips. “No,” she said, slowly. “But he—it—is just a baby. And it seems intelligent too. I don’t think it speaks English, but it understands it fine. I think, if we taught it…well, I think it can be taught.”  
“Really,” said Lilith, slowly. Mary nodded. “And why would we want to do that?” asked her boss, almost with a genuine curiosity.  
‘To see what it can do,” said, Mary, a little confused. “That’s what we do here, isn’t it? See what the monsters are capable of, within laboratory conditions.”

Lilith looked almost amused by that.. “Of course,” she said. “Very well. You have one month to show me it is worth trying to teach the little monster anything. If it does not learn enough, then we will stop your teachings. I will have others test it’s physical limits. You can be in charge of learning it’s mind.” Mary nodded. Lilith would torture the poor thing, she knew that. But she hoped, if she could prove that it was clever, that there was merit in keeping him whole…maybe it—he—wouldn’t be irreversibly harmed. “You may go,” said Lilith, returning to…whatever it was she was doing. Shuffling paper around on her desk it looked like, but Mary just nodded and stood, leaving the room before Lilith changed her mind. She always felt a little bit weak and shaky after leaving Lilith, and she leaned against the wall to recover a bit before pushing off and striding down the hall, twisting her long blonde hair into a pony-tail as she did so. She had a child to teach.

 

Mary knew she shouldn’t get attached. The child was a monster, he wasn’t _human_ , he wouldn’t have the capacity for caring about anyone but himself. But he looked up when she entered the room, and she swore she saw relief in those sad blue eyes. Bela raised her eyebrows. “You’re to teach it?” she asked. Mary nodded. “And I’d prefer to do it without an audience,” she said. Bela rolled her eyes. “You can come back later,” said Mary. “And you don’t need to be in the room to take your notes. Go to the observation room.” Bela sighed, and left. Honestly, she didn’t really care, but sometimes Her High and Mighty Righteousness Winchester needed to be reminded that Bela didn’t actually work for her. 

Mary waited until the woman was gone, and opened the cage, closing the gate behind her. She sat across from the boy again. “Hello again Angel,” she said, with a little smile. He didn’t return the smile, instead watching her warily. “Can you say ‘hello?’” He stared at her, a little sullenly. This might be harder than she’d thought. She had to get him to trust her.   
“I’m Mary,” she said, pointing to herself. He gave a tiny nod. “Can you say it? Mary?”

“Mary,” he said. She grinned at him. 

“Excellent. Do you have a name?” He didn’t answer, just stared, blue eyes never leaving her brown ones. She licked her lips. After a moment, she reached into the pocket of her lab coat, pulling out her wallet. She pulled out a photograph and showed it to the little boy. “That’s me,” she said, unnecessarily. “And that is my son, Dean.” The monster child studied the photograph intensely for a long moment. 

“Dean,” he said, finally. Mary nodded. 

“Yes. Dean. He’s about your age. I think you’d like him. Well, I don’t know about that, but he’d definitely like you. He’s a sweet boy. And he is fascinated by birds right now, so he’d like your wings. They are very pretty,” she added, glancing at the soft grey feathers. He fluffed them a little. She wasn’t sure if that was pleasure or discomfort, so she continued talking. “Dean is a little chatterbox,” she said, and smiled at the other boy’s confused look. He narrowed his eyes at the picture again, holding it tightly, trying to figure out what exactly she meant by that. “Chatterbox. I guess you haven’t heard that before.” He didn’t respond, but she continued anyway. “It means he talks a lot. About anything and everything that crosses his mind. Birds and fish and bugs and trees and if the moon is made of cheese.” The boy shook his head. “Do you know what the moon is made of then, Angel?” she asked.  
He licked his lips and spoke again, in that language she didn’t know. He stopped at her confused expression, and deflated a bit. He touched the floor of the cage, hard cement, and looked up at her.

“Rock?” she asked, wondering if that is what he meant, and he nodded. It was the dim grey of the floor too, he knew, but he wasn’t sure how to express that in English just yet. It was easier to hear and read that it was to speak and write. “Can you say it? The moon is made of rocks?” He shifted slightly and looked down. 

“The moon is made of rocks,” he parroted.

“Good!” she said, enthused. At least he understood her. That would make everything a lot easier. His feathers fluffed slightly, though his face didn’t change, and she thought that meant he was pleased. After a moment of silence, the boy seemed to be struggling with what the proper words. “Come on Angel,” she said quietly. “I won’t be mad if you get it wrong, I promise.”

“Cheese?” he asked. “The moon…um. Made of cheese.”

“Why does he think the moon is made of cheese?” The boy nodded. “He saw a cartoon.” That didn’t look like it explained anything. “There is a story,” she said, about a man and his dog, and they build a rocketship and go to the moon because they are out of cheese for their crackers, and the moon was made of cheese so they built the ship to go and get some.” She almost laughed at the nonplussed expression on the child’s face. “It’s just a story,” she said.

“Silly,” he said. “No…go to moon. “

“Not for cheese anyway,” she agreed. “It would be easier to just go buy some more at the store. But it was just a silly, fun story, like I said. It doesn’t have to make sense.” That seemed to appease the boy for now. 

Mary spent almost all day with the child, calling him Angel more often in her head now, as well as directly to him. Tomorrow, she thought, she’d bring a book. They could read, and he’d get better with words and syntax. He was already doing quite well, she thought. He struggled more with getting words in their proper place, and using identifiers. He didn’t seem very going at prepositions or tenses, or even simple things like ‘the’ and ‘or’ and ‘and.’ Possibly the language he seemed to be used to didn’t use words like that, though it was hard to wrap her head around. Before she left, she tried to take the picture back, but Angel didn’t seem to want to part with it. 

“Mary,” he said. “Dean.” He held it to his chest, staring at her with wide, frightened eyes. Mary offered a small smile. 

“Alright,” she said. “You can keep it. I’ll be back though. Tomorrow I’ll bring a book.” He looked doubtful. “I promise, Angel. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Mary…” he hesitated.

“Yes?”

“Angel?”

“Well, I don’t know your name, do I?” she asked. “And you look like an angel. With the wings and all.” He nodded slowly, mulling this over. “What is your name?” He tightened his lips, and didn’t answer, just stared at the picture of Mary and Dean. Mary nodded to herself, and left the cage, offering one last goodbye as she went.


	2. Mary

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A bit of Angel's POV here, some of it retelling what you saw in Chapter 1. 
> 
> Also, we get to see Mary's home life! Yay for Dean! And John! Being cute.
> 
> Basically, the first half of this chapter is sort of horrible and sad, so...I put fluff in the second half.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There is definite child abuse in this chapter. Nothing sexual, but it is still not good at all. Just so you are forewarned. 
> 
> There is also (attempts) at Enochian. See bottom for more notes. 
> 
> And this is a pretty long chapter.

He had been laughing. He remembered that. Fat fingers tickled his stomach and merry brown eyes had gazed down at him. His brother. He held his stomach, crying now, no laughter. No mischievous eyes twinkling down at him. He’d managed to escape his brother, and dart away, pausing at the side of the small spring just long enough for the older boy to catch up to him before jumping in, splashing water everywhere, and making the other laugh. He’d run across the stream sticking out his tongue, and turned at a sound behind him. Big arms scooped him up, and a bag thrust over his head, He struggled, but wasn’t strong enough. He heard shouting. His brother? And then there was a sharp jab, and then he knew nothing else. 

When he woke, everything hurt. Bright lights shone down, piercing his eyes and making them tear. For a moment, he thought maybe it was a game of sorts, but the table he was lying on was cold and metal, and something equally cold pinned him at his wrists and ankles. “Esiasch*” he cried out. “Lvlo!” But there was no answer. A stranger, huge and with cold watery eyes and no mouth, or nose, just a blue skin glared down at him. “Bagle nanaeel ol nanaeel oi ol ollog**”?” He was crying now, but when he tried to get away, someone snapped something harshly at him, he didn’t pay attention to the words, he was too terrified. Then something was being placed in his mouth, and that too was strapped in, and he started to scream. The sounds were muffled by the gag, but the pain wasn’t. Something jabbed, sharp and hot, over and over into his arm. The tears came swiftly now, and it was hard to breathe, with the gag in his mouth. 

Then it was over, the burning jabs, but the dull throbbing remained. It started on his forearm, but the sensation of it seemed to jump from fingers to elbow. Then the pressure on his wrists and ankles was gone, and he was being forced into a seated position, where a cold circle was fitted around his neck. He heard it click, and he panicked. It hurt to breathe, the metal was too close around his neck, he couldn’t get his fingers under it to tug it away. The gag had been removed with the restraints, but he couldn’t really cry, not the way he wanted. He couldn’t _breathe_. Something was attached to the circle and he was yanked, by a long chain. It choked him, and he was forced along, with the strange man-creature that held the other end of the chain. He pulled the boy sometimes, impatiently, but his legs were numb and his feet hurt to walk on, and he simply couldn’t move fast enough. The hallway he was led down was long and grey and dark. He hated it. The man paused outside a door, and pressed something against a dark square, before the door opened and he was yanked roughly inside. 

There was a cage, in the center of the room, big, like the tiger cage he’d seen at the zoo when his parents had taken them. The thought of his parents had him crying again, crying for them, for his brother, his sister. “Shut up!” snapped a voice, from behind the frightening blue skin. The watery eyed man pulled it down and the boy almost fell over. There was a mouth under there, thin and angry and cruel. He understood the English words well enough, but he couldn’t comply with the order. He didn’t want to go in the cage. There were three sides of bars, and one of the same cold concrete as the floor. There was nothing in the cage, nothing at all. He screamed as the man (it had to be a man), bodily lifted him and opened the cage door all but throwing him inside, and attaching the end of the chain that wasn’t fastened to the metal circle on his neck to one of the bars. He crawled up to the bar  
. “Olani ipam ol,” he sobbed out, “Please,” he added, using one of the few English words he could remember, but the man pulled out a thick wooden bar from his pocket and jabbed his fingers, bruising them, and he reached it through the bars and jammed it against his ribs, into his stomach, and he stumbled away, holding his hurt sides and fingers, trying to get away from the bars, from anything that could stick through them. 

The door opened again, and the boy tensed, on his knees, staring at the newcomer. She looked scary, like the pictures of the sharks in the book his brother had given him for his birthday. She grinned, and he started crying louder. Her grin turned into a scowl, and she too, told him to shut up. He couldn’t. She grabbed ahold of the chain that was still attached to the collar and yanked. It closed, tight on his throat and he only barely managed to get his hands out in time to avoid smashing his face to the floor. He screamed and she yanked the chain again, cutting off his air. “I told you to _shut. up._ ” she hissed, and he tried, gasping on the floor. She nodded to the man, and both of them swept out of the room, still talking, but he wasn’t listening. 

He heard the door open again, some time later, but he couldn’t manage to stay his tears. He was frightened, he was hurt, he wanted to go _home_. 

He ignored everything that was happening outside the cage, until, almost suddenly, someone was in the cage with him. He tensed, trying to hold very still, but the hand was cool, and soft, and the woman didn’t seem to mind that he was crying. Her voice was nice and soothing too. He tried to calm down for her, to understand what she was saying. He was learning English, or he had been. He had no trouble understanding it, but getting the words right was hard. There were less of them, and in a strange order most of the time, and many of the words were smaller too. It was hard to remember all the rules when he had to speak it. She called him baby. He wanted his mother. “Salaman,” he murmured. She didn’t understand him. He whispered another word he knew in English. “Mama.” She talked quietly to him for a long time. He didn’t notice when he fell asleep.

But he was alone when he woke up, though he didn’t stay that way for long. A woman, not as nice looking as Mary, came in and shoved a small plate through a slot in the cage. He was hungry, he thought, and carefully went for the food. She watched him carefully, which frightened him. He didn’t want to get close to the bars again. He looked at the food she’d given him. Toasted bread. A few apple slices. It wasn’t very much, and the toast was dry, but he ate it. He was thirsty, but didn’t know how to ask for a drink. And the woman didn’t seem to want to help him anyway. She reached a metal claw into the cage, sending him reeling backward in a slight panic, remembering the wooden rod from yesterday, but all she did was use it to bring the plate back out. She made a few notes in a small pad, and left. 

He was alone again, this time, until Mary returned, looking a bit…well he wasn’t sure exactly. She didn’t look exactly happy, but she did smile when she saw him, and wasted no time getting in the cage. She didn’t touch him as much today, but she stayed for a lot longer.

Mary was very nice, he thought. She gave him a picture of her and her son, Dean. Dean looked nice too. He didn’t have wings. Neither he nor Mary did. They were like his parents. At least, he’d never seen his parents wings. His brother had always said that they were special, the children, for their wings. His brother and sister though, knew how to hide their wings. And they did, most of the time. He was supposed to learn once his baby feathers fell out and he had proper feathers. Flight feathers. His brother said that not everyone had wings, that their parents didn’t, that the people that came over sometimes, when the children had to stay out of sight didn’t have them, that they wouldn’t understand how special they were. He’d believed his brother. But Mary and Dean didn’t have them. None of the people he’d seen today had wings. Perhaps…perhaps his brother had been wrong, and it wasn’t special. Perhaps it was strange. Mary said that Dean would like them though, and she said his wings were pretty. She called him Angel. 

She also started teaching him how to speak English properly, though he didn’t think he was that good at it. When she praised him though, his wings fluffed proudly. He couldn’t help it. He wanted to make Mary happy. Someone—the woman that had brought breakfast, that Mary called Bela, brought them both food at one point, though she made a sneering comment to Mary about not expecting that sort of treatment every day. She was to feed the monster, not Mary. He wasn’t sure who the monster was supposed to be, but he didn’t know how to ask Mary, and he certainly wasn’t going to ask the angry lady. She frightened him. Everyone here did, except for Mary. She ate her food, and he ate his. His food looked very different than hers. He had a tasteless sort of mush. He didn’t like it much. Mary called it oatmeal. 

He was sad when she left, the door sealing shut. Still, she had let him keep the picture, so he kept it close and stared at it, touching her face. It wasn’t as good as having her here. But it was also less scary when Bela came back with more of the mush and another piece of toast. “We don’t know what you eat yet,” she said. “so you better get used to it.” He made a face, though he didn’t mean to. She ignored him. “Eat,” she said. “I want to go home.”  
“Olani Gil ol oiad salman abai,” he muttered.   
“I don’t speak your freaky language,” she snapped. He flinched. He managed to eat everything. “Salman,” he demanded. “Salman Bela.” It was her turn to flinch.   
“Listen monster,” she hissed, “You do not say my name. I don’t care how little and cute you are, I don’t trust you and I don’t like you. Just do what I say and don’t bloody talk to me.” He swallowed and backed away as she reached the claw inside. He wasn’t fast enough, and she managed to get his foot, squeezing it, and making him cry out before she said, “oops,” without sounding like she meant it, and grabbing the bowl instead. He cradled his foot in his hands. It was red where she’d pressed it. He curled up into a ball again. He wanted to go home.

He was woken by a sharp tug to the chain. “Wakey, wakey,” said the shark-woman that seemed to like hurting him. “We’re going to do some tests today.” He was already gasping and shaking. She didn’t seem to care. “Come here.” The woman didn’t seem to care that he started to come, because she grabbed the chain and yanked it hard, sending him crashing to the floor. “What are you doing?” she asked. “I thought I told you to come here.” She pulled the chain again, dragging him toward her, making it impossible to get to his feet and walk. He was already in tears by the time she dragged him to the door. She unlocked the cage and then jerked him out. She clipped a new chain onto his collar and unclipped the one that he had been wearing. Apparently, there’d be two. One for leaving, and one for staying. Still, he was glad to leave. He had to go to the bathroom very badly. 

He was pulled down that horrible, frightening hallway again, and into the big white room. He was divested of the thin cotton trousers he was wearing and forced to squat over a metal pail. “Now, whatever you are,” she said, “we’ll take urine and fecal samples.” He had no idea what she was talking about, but she seemed to want him to go to the bathroom. He’d prefer a toilet, but this seemed to be all she was willing to let him have. It was with relief that he released his bowels (he wasn’t a baby, he knew how to properly go to the bathroom). But she didn’t seem inclined to give him anything to clean himself with. “Clean?” he asked. He knew that word. It was probably the wrong one, but hopefully she’d get the idea. 

“You’re an animal,” she’d sniffed. “Why should you need to clean yourself?”  
“Clean,” he repeated, not a question this time.  
“Very well,” she said. He’d learn to come to hate and fear that tone in her voice, that playful lilt that sounded almost girlish. It hid something much darker.

He was dragged then, to a door, and into a cold room with a post in the middle. The chain was clicked onto a ring on the post, and he had no idea how this was supposed to help him get clean. Then the water started. It was freezing, and there was so _much_ of it. It stung and the pressure of it on his back sent him smashing into the pole. The water changed direction, and he was jerked backwards. Then everything went black. 

He woke in his cage again, neck and heat throbbing, skin red, though dry now, back in the same thin cotton trousers. Apparently, they hadn’t attempted to find a shirt to fit his wings. He’d had a few, had even been wearing one when he was captured, shirts that he put on front first, that zipped or tied or buttoned in the back. He supposed there was no one to help him now, but it was still cold. And his neck hurt badly. He could barely move. So he lay, shivering, and aching, not even able to look up when the door opened. 

*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&

Mary blanched when she saw the little boy that day. His hair was wet, his skin red. He looked like he was in agony. She opened the cage and he stirred, weakly. “Hey Angel,” she said. “Don’t move okay?” She walked over and settled next to him. “I’m going to rub your neck a bit,” she warned. “They shouldn’t have done that.” She swallowed. She knew about the Post of course, but that wasn’t usually how they _bathed_ the monsters. It was a punishment. As it was, it was lucky the boy hadn’t died or snapped his neck. She hummed softly, as she carefully kneaded the child’s abused neck and shoulders. When he was able to sit up, she smiled. Angel didn’t return it, but he didn’t look afraid of her either. “I brought you some things,” she said. “You can’t keep all of it, but some of it you can. If you’re quiet about it.” She put a finger to his lips, and he nodded gingerly, wincing. She kicked herself internally. “Don’t nod,” she said. “If you understand me, or agree, say ‘yes,’ if you don’t agree, say ‘no.’”  
“Yes,” he said, softly. She smoothed his wet hair back from his forehead.   
“There you go, baby.”  
“Angel,” he hummed.  
“Alright. Angel.” She smiled. “Baby is what I call Dean sometimes.” Angel swallowed.  
“No,” he said carefully. “Dean…um. Angel not baby.”   
“You’d say, ‘I am not a baby,” she corrected, and the boy repeated it, to a delighted smile from Mary.   
“Good. Now, get comfortable.” He didn’t move. “Are you comfortable?”  
“Yes.”  
“Right.” She didn’t quite believe him, but she didn’t push it. “Now. This book is called ‘Goodnight Moon.’” He glanced up at her, not moving his neck.  
“No cheese.” Mary laughed.  
“No. There is no cheese on the moon. But this book isn’t about cheese on the moon. Do you want me to read it?”  
“Yes,” he said.   
So Mary made herself comfortable (might as well try to set an example) and started reading the book. She read it slowly, so Angel could understand everything, with her finger tracing along the line so she didn’t lose her place. And so Angel could follow along. When she finished, it looked like he was about to cry. She was about to ask what was wrong, but he flipped it to the beginning.  
“Again, please,” he said.   
“Can you read it again please,” she corrected gently, though to be fair, there is no way Dean would have said ‘please’ at all. Angel repeated her dutifully, and Mary read the book through once more. And a third time. They were half-way through the fourth read when Bela came in with the dry toast and apple slices again.   
“He’ll need something besides that you know,” said Mary disapprovingly.   
“This is fine,” she said. “He’s getting all the nutrients he needs with this, the oatmeal, and the stew.” Angel let Mary bring the food to him, and return the tray. He didn’t want to get caught by the claw again.  
“Keep please?” he asked, after the book was over.  
“Say, ‘can I keep the book please,’” said Mary, and Angel repeated it. He also pointed to the word ‘moon,’ and said “Geraa.” Mary blinked, and repeated it back.   
“No,” said Angel, pointing again to the word moon and saying “Geraa.” This time, Mary said it right.   
“Geraa means moon?” she asked, cautiously.  
“Yes.” Fascinating.   
“What language is it?” Angel shrugged. “You don’t know?”  
“No,” he said. “We talk it.”  
“You speak it.”  
“Yes. Speak it.” A few tears fell from his eyes. “Salman,” he sniffed. “Salman, Mary.” She ran her hand over his hair again.   
“I don’t know what….Salamann,” she said slowly. Angel flipped through the book.  
“Goodnight,” he said slowly. “House. Salmnn.” Mary licked her lips.  
“I’m sorry, Angel,” she said quietly. “You can’t. It’s dangerous.” Dangerous for him? Or for humans? She didn’t know. But she couldn’t help him go home. He bent his head carefully, shoulders shaking. Mary felt herself starting to tear up too. God. What had possessed them to bring a child here? 

“Oh,” she said, forcing cheer into her voice. “I forgot, I have some more things!” She reached into the bag she’d brought and pulled out a few more pictures. “I have a picture of me,” she said, showing him, “I took two, so you can keep it, and here is one of Dean again, at Halloween. He went as a cowboy. And one from the Halloween before last when he went as a cow.” She laughed. “This year, he wants to go as a ‘moon guy.’” Angel looked confused. “He means an astronaut. Someone who really _can_ go up in a spaceship to go to the moon.” The boy looked dubious, and she smiled. “I’ll bring a book about space next time.” Well, he had had a book about the sea. It might be nice to see the book about space too. “More pictures,” she said. “Here’s my husband, John.” She had several more pictures to show him, and told him he could keep two. He chose the photo of Mary by herself, and the one of Dean in his cowboy outfit. Angel had dressed up for Halloween too, he thought. This most recent one anyway. He’d been a sailor. It had been fun, and he had been allowed to go to town. No one thought it was weird he had wings, and he saw such _strange_ things. But he’d seen a girl with a white robe and sparkly hoop over her head and white wings that were glittery and bigger than his, though they didn’t move so well, and a boy dressed like a pumpkin with a face. Or someone called Jack Lanern, according to his sister, but that was mostly confusing. He hoped that if he could see Dean’s cowboy picture, he could remember about his own Halloween. 

Before she left, Angel wanted to read the book again. “One word. Slow,” he said. She started to read it again, and this time, as she read each word, he repeated it, studying the words with intensity. She was surprised, but rather impressed. Hopefully, if he kept this up, Lilith would see the merit in teaching Angel. She tore out a piece of paper from her notebook, and carefully wrote out the English alphabet, going over each, upper, and lower case with Angel. She wrote his name, and her name as well, and then added John and Dean for good measure. “You can practice,” she said. “See if you can know some of the letters when I get back.” He had nodded seriously, and went started immediately studying the letters. 

Her report took a long time that day. She kept getting distracted. However, once it was done, she turned it in, managed to avoid being kept by Lilith, and left the facility.

John didn’t know exactly what she did. And she was glad of that, usually. It would be far too complicated to explain about monsters. But right now, it was hard. She didn’t have anyone to talk to about Angel, not really. She had only known the child for a few days, but it was harder and harder to leave him each time. 

Still, she smiled when she walked in the door, scooping up Dean who had waited by the window for when she pulled up and came pounding over to meet her at the door, launching himself in the air for a hug. He did the same to John sometimes, but her husband didn’t leave the house as much. He worked as a freelance mechanic out of their garage and backyard sometimes, but they didn’t usually have more than three or so cars he was working on at any given time. So in the mornings, she drove Dean to daycare, and then off to work, John worked on the cars, until lunchtime, when Dean carpooled home, John fed him, and sent him off to his friend Patrick’s house for a few hours to get some more work done. Patrick’s mother was quite nice about it, not even asking to be paid. It worked out well for them, because when she wanted a date night, she’d just drop Patrick off at the Winchester’s and get a free night of babysitting. 

“Mrs Saint James has a _pool_ ” Dean informed her. “It’s got water innit an’ everythin’!”  
“Oh really,” she said, amused, glancing at John who raised his eyebrows. Apparently, this pool was all he’d been hearing about all day.   
“Really,” said Dean adamantly. “An’ I couldn’t swim innit today ‘cause I didn’t have floaties an’ Patrick only has his ones, but daddy says I can swim tomorrow, can I?” Mary ruffled his hair and put him down.   
“Well, if Daddy says you can,” she said, amused.  
“He did,” Dean assured her, “But only if you said yes.” He looked rather pleased with himself for pulling this off. John rolled his eyes.   
“Why don’t you get washed up for dinner,” she said.  
“I am!” he announced. “I did the salads. I don’t like salads,” he added. “I like ice cream. We used the same bowls. Can I have ice cream?”  
“After dinner, if we have any,” she said. This seemed to satisfy Dean and he trotted back to the kitchen to stand on the chair he was using to help ‘make’ the salads. Mostly he was just smashing lettuce into a bowl and trying to sneakily take tomatoes out of his bowl and put it in the other two. It wasn’t effective. Or as sneaky as he clearly thought he was being. By the time the pasta was re-heated and Dean was at his place at the table, both Mary and John had a surplus of tomatoes, but Dean still had a few in his bowl. John was far sneakier about putting tomatoes in Dean’s bowl than Dean was taking them out of it. 

Dean kept them entertained throughout dinner telling them about Tommy Webber and Andrew Thomas’ fight, because they weren’t talking right now, it meant that Dean was currently the best friend of both of them, which he thought was brilliant, because as long as he didn’t hog the blocks like Tommy Webber had which is what caused the fight, he got to play with the blocks _and_ with the best play-house costumes (including the hat with the peacock feathers) which in his mind, made him hopeful that Tommy and Andrew never made up. “But they prob’ly will,” he said, a little mournfully. “They always do. An’ then Tommy gets the hat.” He looked like this was a travesty. Or the end of the world. Which, for an almost four year old, it probably was. It was, after all, an awfully big hat.

Mary sang ‘California Girls’ by the Beach Boys to get Dean to go to sleep that night. She’d never been good at kids songs or lullabys, so she just went with the songs that she liked. Beatles, Beach boys, Kinks. She was glad he didn’t understand most of what the lyrics meant though. 

Returning downstairs, John had poured them both a glass of wine. “Hello, wife,” he grinned.   
“Hello, husband,” she replied, giving him a soft kiss on the cheek and taking the wine. She turned to go sit on the couch and he grabbed her about the waist, gently pulling her close.   
“I feel like I never see you,” he murmured, kissing her jaw just under her ear. She hummed, and he kissed a line down her jaw, onto her neck, and she shivered, letting him sway her gently from foot to foot as he hummed a song that she thought was meant to be ‘Simple Man,’ but honestly, it was sort of hard to tell. 

She leaned back against him and closed her eyes, just reveling in the closeness of her husband. Soon though, he was leading her to the couch, and they were cuddled up on it while American Idol played quietly on the television. She leaned up and kissed his cheek, beard prickling her slightly, and she giggled. “Don’t know who you lost a bet with,” she said, “But that has _got_ to go. You trying to outdo Bobby?” John rolled his eyes. His business partner looked like he’d been forty since he was twenty, and he’d probably look forty till he was sixty. The beard wasn’t helpful really.   
“Didn’t lose anything,” he said. “I kind of like it.” The wine was gone, glasses on the table and he pressed his mouth to her cheek, hands on her stomach and she laughed, wriggling. “Ticklish, Mary?” he asked, teasing.   
“God, don’t you dare,” she said.  
“Good try,” he said. “But I’m John, not God.” And he rubbed his bearded cheek against her neck, fingers brushing her shirt up to slide against her sensitive ribs. She almost gave a tiny shriek as she tried to get away, but he captured the sound with his mouth, humor giving way slightly to just kissing. She curled up against his side them, head on his shoulder as they absently watched people who said they were great at singing find out that despite their delusions, they were terrible, and the jerky Englishman shattered their dreams. John’s hand gently stroked her side, not intent on tickling this time. Mary was almost asleep by the time the show was over, and she let John rouse her enough to get ready for bed, and crawl in.  
“Love you John,” she murmured. She heard his acknowledgment, though not his assurance that he loved her too. She didn’t need to hear the words though, she felt his arm curl around her, warm and strong and safe, and she drifted off to sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Enochian is HARD. And a lot of sites have different spellings and there are a LOT of words that can mean the same thing. I found two for ‘house’ which I used to mean ‘home’: Salman and Salamann. So. If I use them interchangeably, I am sorry. I try not to, but there will be notes at the bottom if there is Enochian in the story.   
> If you see issues with the Enochian, blame the conflicting websites. And also me, I suppose, for not being able to choose just one to go with. I used two in particular, a translator and a dictionary, but honestly…well, it is hugely probably I did it wrong. 
> 
> Enochian words and phrases used: 
> 
> Bagle nanaeel ol nanaeel oi ol ollog: Why do you do this to me  
> Olani ipam ol: I beg of you  
> Olani gil ol oiad salamann abai: I want to go home too  
> Salamann: House  
> Esiasch: Brother  
> Geraa: Moon  
> Lvld: Mother
> 
> If I forgot one, let me know, and I'll add it.   
> Also, I've never written Mary Winchester before. Or John Winchester. Or young Dean. So. Tell me what you think!


	3. Positive

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some more of Alistair and Lilith abusing Angel, though again, nothing sexual.  
> Mama bear Mary comes to the rescue, and then there's some Mary&Angel fluff, and Mary&Dean fluff.  
> And then a story and a surprise.
> 
> Also, a few hints scattered throughout this chapter. Hints AND shoutouts. I won't tell you which is which, but feel free to guess.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There area few hints and tips scattered throughout this chapter, and indeed throughout the other two, but more this one, about coming plot! Mostly the plot of Part 2, but everything in this story sets up part two. 
> 
> There are also a few shout outs to SPN. 
> 
> I won't tell you what's a hint and what's a shout out, but have fun guessing!

Angel woke from a dream about home. About family. He woke crying, with the memory of laughing brown eyes and flaming red hair and splashing in the stream. He wanted to go home. Mary said it was dangerous, but surely it could not be more dangerous than here, than this place. He’d heard his father describe something as a hellhole once. He wasn’t entirely sure what that was, but it sounded awful. Like here. 

It was still early, he knew that. The automatic lights hadn’t come on yet. But there was enough to see by. He could study the alphabet that Mary had left, he could try to read the book. He thought he mostly remembered it. It was helpful that there were little pictures sometimes, to tell you what was new on the page to say goodnight to. He’d never considered saying goodnight to anything but a living creature before. Well. There wasn’t anything to say goodnight to in here anyway. 

When the shark-woman came in with the pale-eyed man, he panicked. She picked up the chain, and he almost tripped over himself trying to get to the door so she wouldn’t yank it again. He wanted his mother to come and get him. This is a mistake. The shark-woman called him monster, but he wasn’t scary. She was. 

He wasn’t fast enough. She yanked the chain and sent him tumbling down, which made his neck burn. He let out a choked yell of pain. That’s when the wooden rod that had smashed his fingers a few sleeps previously (probably days. There were no windows, so it was hard to tell), made it’s reappearance. It smashed down on his shoulder.

“Be quiet,” sneered the man. “You scream, you get hit, you cry, you get hit, you fucking _snivel_ you get hit.”  
“Do watch your language Alastair,” said the lady, calmly, but with a hint of steel in her tone. The man apologized, and that is how Angel learned who was in charge. And the name of the cruel man with the pale eyes.   
“Bagle-“ he began and was smacked again through the bars.  
“English,” growled the man, Alistair. “No more of that nonsense language, pet.” 

Angel shivered. He didn’t like how the man called him that. He wasn’t a pet. He was a boy. A person. The door opened and he was dragged out. He was taken to that white room again, to go to the bathroom, and then the pole room. As soon as he was in it, he grabbed hold of the pole, clutching it tight, with both small arms, trying to ignore the laughter of Alistair and the scary shark-woman as the water pounded into his back. It slowed, and he let go, only to have it smash back into him again, before stopping, leaving him dazed and hurting. 

They made him put the trousers back on before unclipping him from the post, and dragging him, still wet back to the cage. There was a blanket in there, and he immediately dried himself with it. It was itchy and it smelled bad, like sick, but he managed to dry off. 

He supposed it was lucky that they hadn’t taken any of the things Mary had given him. He was allowed to keep the book, the photos, the paper. At least, he was so far. Angel was rather frightened they might take them away, like they’d taken him from his home. He wandered around the cage, looking for a place to hide them, but everything was smooth. There was no place. 

When Mary came in, looking better than the day before, thought Angel, he was sitting in the middle of the cage, clutching the book to him, the photos and the paper inside it, holding onto it so tightly his knuckles were white, as if someone was going to come and take it away at any moment. 

“You alright Angel?” asked the woman, concerned. He nodded slowly, and held out the book. “You wanna read it again?” He nodded again. She was a bit concerned, at his lack of talking, but sat beside him, and was surprised when he pressed himself against her side while she read. 

He made her read the story three times in a row, the last time going very slow, so he could repeat every word back. He memorized what each looked like, burning images of the words and letters into his brain. He had never seen his language written down, only spoken it, been born knowing it, though he didn’t see anything strange with that, but he did notice that most of the sounds were very similar. Though English had more of them, and you didn’t always have to pronounce every letter. It was difficult. 

But the fourth time, he carefully, slowly, went through every page of the book and got (mostly) every word right. Mary wasn’t sure if he was memorizing or reading, but either way it was impressive. She thought it might be reading, because he sometimes pronounced the words incorrectly, or substituted his language for the English. 

They went over the English alphabet next, until he knew every letter. Mary was more than impressed. The boy was definitely clever. Dean didn’t know his letters so well yet, and he’d been practicing. Angel didn’t know the song that came with the letters, but he didn’t need it either. 

Mary saw the bruising on Angel’s shoulders, his fingers, his foot. He seemed to bruise easily, this boy. She wanted to take him home, to keep him safe until he could do it for himself. She knew all of the reasons she could not do that. So she said nothing, and she read that stupid children’s book over and over. 

He was reading, she found, after writing a few words on the notepad she carried with her, and he carefully sounded each out, glancing up at her after every word. She wondered if it had anything to do with what he was, that he learned to read in just a few days. 

Angel wasn’t really aware he’d done anything spectacular. He’d never learned a language before, he just _knew_ it. What’s more, he was aware of that about himself. He was born with the knowledge there, under his skin, a full vocabulary, if not a full understanding. He’d never seen the words written in his language, or heard it named, but he and his siblings all spoke it. His parents did not, and they seemed concerned that his older siblings had taught him a language they’d made up, but…they had been born knowing it too. It had been his brother and sister, teasing eyes and firey hair, fading too quickly from his memory, that had taught him a few words of English. They hadn’t really found it necessary. They could understand him, interpret, and he understood English perfectly, though he recognized it as a different language. Now that he had a reason to learn it, with a teacher that needed him to speak in a language she could understand, he applied himself. 

“Hard….not very,” he said, carefully. She corrected his syntax, but she was always doing that. “It…is not…very hard,” he said slowly, trying to remember the order of the words. It was the order that was difficult to remember, not the words themselves. He supposed that would get better with time. He hoped it would. 

The rest of the month past quickly for Mary, and almost agonizingly slowly for Angel. He woke early every day, either from dreams (the dreams were often good, the waking, bad), or from Lilith, as he learned the shark-lady was called (he preferred shark-woman), or Alistair yanking on the chain around his neck to force him to the front of the cage where they exchanged chains, and dragged him to the cold white room, where he was allowed to use the bathroom (chamber pot), the one time a day he was allowed to do it, and to the post room, where he had to hold the pole tightly, though his arms didn’t reach the whole way around, to let the painful water slam against his back. And sometimes, when they stopped the water and he let go, the water would start again, which would smack him into the post, or the wall, which always ended up knocking him out and giving him what Mary called ‘whiplash,’ with an angry look on her face. When he remembered not to let go, sometimes, he would feel a different sting as Alistair used the wooden rod (or sometimes metal) to smack his hands or his back or his legs to force him to let go, while he made a horrible joke about the post. Angel didn’t know what he meant, but he was sure it was bad. He used the word ‘fuck’ which the first time had made Lilith chide him on his language, but usually, she just gave that cold, dead-eyed shark-smile. 

 

After the bathroom and shower, he’d be put into his wet cotton trousers again and dragged back to the cage, where cold toast, often burned or stale, and some sort of fruit, usually apple slices, waited for him. Sometimes, the apples had peanut butter on them, which was always good, and filled him up more than they did without the sticky substance. He learned, after the first day, to not use the blanket to dry off with. It only made it smell worse, and it never dried the whole way, and it was _cold_ in the cage at night. 

He didn’t like the wet trousers though, they were itchy and they stuck to his skin and made him cold. Usually, he just took them off before he ate breakfast, and tried to dry himself with his hands before he put them back on, still uncomfortable, but better than before. 

And then it was waiting for Mary to come. He would read Goodnight Moon, and practice letters, and look at the photos, until she came in the door. She always smiled at him, and now, he smiled back, feathers ruffling slightly every time. They were almost always wet for most of the day, which was horrible, because they were heavy and they smelled weird when they dried. 

Three days after the blanket made it’s first appearance, Mary noted that the bruises, which had been livid the day previous, were nearly gone. Angel though, appeared wan and listless, and a little bit green even. She glanced at the rather foul smelling blanket, and had a rather horrible feeling she knew what had happened. 

After leaving Angel that day, she stalked to Lilith’s office. “Lilith,” she said, firmly, even if her boss frightened her a little, “I want to wash the blanket. Or give him a good one, that one’s got sick all over it. It was what, dunked in water to get the vomit off?” 

Lilith grinned. “We are testing his limits,” she said. “He’s in a secure environment, we need to know how illness can affect him.”

“Then give him a vaccine,” said Mary. “This…this is like the settlers giving the natives smallpox blankets. It is cruel and verging on actual evil.” Lilith had just laughed. Mary didn’t like that. She continued. “And you have to let him use a proper bathroom,” she said. “He doesn’t need those…power wash baths every day, in fact, it’s probably doing more harm than good.”

“Are you telling me how to do my job?” Right. Her voice was dangerous now.

“No,” said Mary. “But I am suggesting we don’t try to kill him.”

“It’s an animal,” said Lilith. “A monster. It does not need germ-free blankets or toilets.”

Mary wanted to chuck Lilith’s antique silver chalice at her head. “Even so. We treat the adults with more respect that this little boy. We can teach him. Punish him when you must, but…the Post is punishment. And he hasn’t done anything. Do what tests you must but…give him some time in between. Otherwise, how can you trust your results? Or mine,” she added. “I’ve written up my reports, but it is hard to get a feel on his ‘usual’ behavior when he isn’t allowed to act naturally.” It was a good argument, and even Lilith had to see its sense. Still. She did not like Mary.

“Do what you want, then,” she said, “And get out,” she said lazily, waving her hand at the other blonde. “I have to make a private call.” 

*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&**&*&**&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*

The next time Mary came to see Angel, she had a new, clean blanket (more of a comforter), a child’s training toilet, and a roll of toilet paper. “You know how to use a toilet?” she asked him, kindly. 

He looked at the chair in distaste. “Green,” he said. “An’ blue. Why? An’ for babies,” he added, a little imperiously. “Knowing how to big….potty.” Toilet. Wasn’t that the word she’d used. Anyway. It hardly mattered. It wasn’t a word that translated from his usual language. Mary sighed.

“I know it’s a bit childish, and I thought you might be potty trained,” oh, so you _could_ use the word potty. He’d thought so, “because Dean has been for a bit more than a year now, but I had to make sure. And I’m sorry you think it’s babyish, but…it’s the best I can do. Lilith doesn’t want you using the bathrooms here.” She didn’t want this little monster to meet any of the older ones. Or visa versa. “So for now, at least, use this. I’ll take care of the bowl when I get here in the morning, and before I leave at night. And see if we can’t get a drain in here somewhere.” Angel just stared, then shrugged, petting the comforter she’d given him. “Oh!” he jerked, looking up at her. “And I brought something else, since you’ve gotten so good at reading already.” She smiled broadly, and handed him a book. He studied it for a long moment.

“Pah-oh-keh-eh-t….Pah-oh-ket,” he glanced up at her.

“Pocket,” she corrected.

“Pocket,” repeated, “English,” (he knew that word very well by now), “D-eye-kuh-ti-eye-oh-nary,” he tried. That was a hard one. 

“Dictionary,” said Mary. “The first I is a soft ‘i’ remember, we talked about it? It doesn’t make an ‘eye’ sound, it makes an ‘ih,’ sound.” He nodded. 

“Dictionary. Pocket English Dictionary.” He froze, realizing what it was, and looked up. “Really?” he asked. “Words…all words, for me?”

“Well, not all of them,” she said. “It’s only a small dictionary. Meant to be carried around. The really big ones you can hardly lift! This one is light and little. Like you. It has the important words in it.”

“Like me?” he asked, looking up at her shyly through thick lashes.

Mary smiled and ruffled his hair. “Like you, Angel.” That was the first time she heard him laugh. It warmed her just as much as when Dean did it, only…it felt so much more important this time. Angel wouldn’t have much to laugh about. She hoped he could hold onto this memory.

The month wore on. He asked about home less and less, and she thought he was starting to understand that he wouldn’t leave here. He smiled whenever she came in, and about a week before the end of the month, proudly showed her his new trousers. “I growing. Growed,” he corrected himself. He was still wrong, but he was coming along very quickly.

“Grew,” she said. “Past tense of grow is grew.” He nodded seriously.

“I grew,” he said carefully. He was always so careful, so…exact. She had to wonder if it is how he always was, or if it was a factor of whatever conditioning Alistair did that left him in bruises for three or four days at a time. Still, she was impressed by how quickly he healed. Even the time the blanket had made him sick, he’d only been achy and nauseous for about a day, and he hadn’t thrown up at all. She had noticed that when it came to anything but grammar, he never made the same mistake twice. And now…he was making the same general mistakes with his words that all three-year-olds made. He didn’t sound like he was trying to learn a foreign language anymore. It was just…English now. 

Lilith came to see him, apparently for the first time in weeks, on the last day of the month. “Mary says you’ve been doing well.” Angel stared down at his feet. “Answer!” she bit out.

“Yes,” he said, almost squeaking. 

“Yes what?” she demanded.

“Yes….Lilith?” he questioned.

“You will call me Miss Lilith, am I understood?”

“Yes. Um. Miss Lilith.” Shark-woman, he added, in his head. 

“Now,” she said. “Show me what you have learned.”

Angel was quite clearly terrified of Lilith, and he stumbled his way through Goodnight Moon and the ABC’s, but when Lilith wrote down words on the whiteboard she’d brought, he read them perfectly.. Either he’d gotten control of his nerves or he had to concentrate harder with things he was less comfortable with, but in the end, Mary decided, it didn’t matter. It was enough. Lilith agreed to hold off on hurting the boy. Well. On ‘physical tests,’ for the time being. Until he was stronger, she said, and Mary knew she’d have to be okay with that. 

Angel looked rather pleased with himself when Lilith left, and Mary rumpled his hair. He ducked away, flushing, though his feathers puffed out a bit, and his smile widened, he didn’t laugh. 

He was allowed different books now, never more than two at a time, aside from ‘Goodnight Moon’ and the dictionary. Lilith told Mary to watch giving him things, that she couldn’t do that. He wasn’t her son and he wasn’t her property. Technically, said Lilith, smugly, everything the creature owned belonged to her, not it, and not Mary. 

Angel found that, as time passed, he missed home. He missed it a lot. But he hated this place less too. The blanket Mary had given him was very nice and comfortable and warm. They let him use the training toilet Mary brought, which was a bit gross, but she did clean it. Well, sometimes Bela did, especially if he’d eaten something different, which he didn’t put too much thought into. It was cleaned away only minutes after it was used, and that was all he cared about. He took baths now, instead of showers at the post. He was brought (still painfully) to a different white room with a large bucket of water (usually cold), and he was allowed to clean himself without getting his wings wet every day. They looked better for it too, when he was allowed to groom them himself, with his fingers. He really needed oils and things to do it right, but he still had new feathers, so he didn’t make them himself, like his brother had. Once a week, before his bath, they made him get weighed and measured, and they took all sorts of time checking his eyes and ears. Sometimes they hurt him, and shot needles in him, and sometimes they did it the other way and took blood _from_ him, and those were his least favorite days. 

One day, Mary brought something special. “You can’t keep it,” she said. “But it’ll take a picture. And you can keep _that_ , alright?” He had been fascinated, and nodded. She told him to smile, which he didn’t understand, but he tried anyway, and she clicked a button. There was a flash of light, and when he was still blinking away the bright spots, he noticed her shaking out a piece of paper. She showed him a clearing image. It was a little boy, with dark hair and blue eyes, grimacing a bit, and grey fluffy wings poofed out, startled, on either side of him. It took him a second to get that it was him, that this was a picture of _him_. He’d never had a photo of himself before. He thought he’d seen his reflection sometimes, but now he knew for sure. He smiled broadly at Mary, who laughed. “Why couldn’t you do that for the photo?” She sat down and patted her lap. After a moments hesitation, he sat down in it. She held the camera out, facing them. “Smile for real this time,” she said, and clicked the button. Now he was well and truly blinded, and had to rub his eyes frantically for several minutes before he managed to blink his vision clear again. Mary showed him the picture. There she was, a bit out of frame, but he could still see her, all but the top corner of her head, holding him, a slightly better smile than the first one. He didn’t see much of his body, just his face and shoulders and a bit of his wing. You could see the top of Mary’s arm though, and see that it was curled around him. Like he was something worth protecting. 

“I keep them,” he stated. She nodded, serious as he usually was.

“Yes,” she said. “You can.” Mary loved his smiles just as much as she loved Dean’s, or John’s. She hoarded them jealously, each and every one. 

Sometimes John accused her of being distracted, to which she’d vaguely respond, “It’s just work stuff John. You don’t have to worry about it.” He did anyway, she could tell.

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She couldn’t get Angel out of her mind, and one day, when Dean asked for his bedtime story, she smiled and kissed his forehead. “How about, I tell you a story of Angel?” she asked. Dean made a face.

“Angel?” he asked. “Sounds fruity.”

Mary burst out laughing. “Where did you hear that term?”

“Dad,” he said, calmly. “I was tellin’ him ‘bout the hat with the feathers at daycare, an’ how now there’s a snake with feathers too an’ some of them are sparkly, an’ all of it’s pink an’ he said it sounds fruity. I tol’ him it was a snake, not fruit, but he said that wasn’t what he meaned an’ then he didn’t esplain what he meaned anyways. How’s a snake with feathers fruity?” Mary sighed. God save her from the lack of filter on John Winchester.

“I think…I think you mean a boa,” she started.

“Yeah,” said Dean, bouncing a bit. “A boa ‘sticker, an’ it’s got feathers.” Mary smiled.

“A boa is a bit of…well it’s sort of silly really. It’s a long, feathery thing that women sometimes where to look classy. A boa constrictor is a kind of snake that squeezes you really hard. They aren’t the same thing. Your father meant fruity to mean…girly.” Dean frowned, piecing this information together.

“He sounded…like he didn’t like it,” he said. “Does he not like girly?”

“Not when it’s for boys. Your daddy is very silly sometimes. If you like the boa and the hat you can wear them, okay? It’s not…fruity, as your dad says. Or silly. Unless you want it to be, but you can make anything silly if you want.” She smiled. Dean nodded solemnly, but he clearly had no idea what she was talking about.

“So…Angel?” he asked, laying down and wriggling to get comfortable.

“Angel,” she said, “was a little boy with great lovely wings.” Dean gasped. “Yes,” said Mary, “Great wings, and he could fly and soar with the birds all day long. But he was lonely, because he didn’t have a family. ‘I must have come from somewhere,’ he said,”

“Yeah, ‘cause of he’s gotta have a mommy an’ daddy,” said Dean.

“Yes, he has to, doesn’t he,” said Mary, a little thoughtfully. “And this Angel, he decided that he liked flying , and talking to the birds, but he wanted to find his proper family. So he flew to the nearby town to see if his family lived there. He landed in the center of the square.”

“Did people pay him?”

“Why would they do that?”

“’Cause of when people stand in the square people give ‘em money.”

“Um. I guess they do, but mostly those people are asking for it, or they are doing tricks or playing music or something. People don’t just give other people standing around money.”

“Oh. Well, he was flyin’. That’s a trick.”

“They didn’t give him money. They were scared of him. He was only a little boy, but they were scared because they’d never seen a little boy with wings. They heard that monsters lived in the mountains and thought the boy was one of them.” 

Dean scoffed. “That’s silly. He’s only a flyin’ boy.”

“That’s right,” agreed Mary. “But they were a lot bigger than he was, and they captured him up, and hid him away to find out what he was. All they found out was that he was very smart, and sort of scared, and he just wanted to go home. He missed the birds and the sky and flying, because he wasn’t allowed to do it anymore. One day, when he was crying,”

“Why was he cryin’?”

“Because he was lonely,” said Mary. “And sometimes the people who were trying to learn from him, hurt him instead.”

“On purpose?” 

Mary hesitated before replying, “no, of course not. They didn’t understand what might hurt him though. So he was crying when the caretaker’s son,”

“Dean!” he proclaimed. 

Mary laughed and tickled his tummy, “yes, Dean,” oh to have the self-importance of a three year old, “walked by and found the room where Angel was. He snuck inside and stared at the winged boy. ‘Hello,’ He said. ‘I’m Dean.’” Angel sniffed and stopped crying. ‘Hello Dean,’” he said. ‘Are you stuck too?’ Dean said, ‘no, I’m not, but why are you?’ ‘I don’t know,’ said Angel. ‘I am only small.’ And Dean, that clever boy,” –here Dean giggled a little,--“knew that he could help. ‘I will get you out,’ he decided, and that night, with a key in hand, he unlocked Angel’s cage and helped the winged boy out. ‘I will show you the stars,’ said Angel, and he took Dean’s hand and the two of them flew up, up, up…And a pack of stars zooming by found them, and they laughed and played, and Angel knew he’d found his family. The end.”

Dean smiled sleepily. “Dancin’ in the stars. Good for Angel. An’ Dean.”

Angel at work fueled her stories of Angel at night, and at work, he always liked to hear what Dean had said or done. He liked to hear the stories too, but she didn’t tell them often to Angel. She read other stories to him. Fairy tales and myths of all sorts—he seemed to like those the best, and sometimes stories of far off lands—he seemed to like Narnia—but she stayed away from stories that had too much magic or seemed to be part of the world they lived in. If there were talking animals, or inanimate objects, that was fine—but stories like Harry Potter or Charlie Bone were dangerous. Children with power, or who were different eventually overcoming….she would have liked to tell him such stories, but she knew Lilith would see it as subversive. Dangerous. So she refrained. 

Angel also liked history, she found, so she started teaching him that too. It was early, really to teach him much besides basics of reading and writing, but he picked everything up fast, and he had an unquenchable thirst for knowledge. His current book to read was one of the Narnia ones—The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe, and he seemed fascinated by an eternal winter and magic portals to take you to far off lands. He refused to let Mary help with the reading of the book, but he was getting better and better at doing it himself. He did let her help with the history though. He wanted to know about kings and queens right now, and the war that was mentioned in the book, so Mary had brushed up on mediaeval royalty as well as World War II and Angel seemed by turns delighted and horrified by the tales. She tried to water it down a bit, to keep it appropriate for a three year old. If it were Dean, it would be easy to do it, but Angel…it was easy to forget he was only three. Much of the time, he seemed a lot older. 

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Dean requested Angel stories almost nightly now. Usually, it involved Dean saving Angel, but one day, Dean stopped her before she began and requested that Angel save Dean. “It all’ays happens t’other way ‘round,” he complained. “Angel is cool. He doesn’t hafta be all’ays stuck.” Mary was a bit nonplussed by that, but she did manage to have Dean stuck in a hole—because he’d promised to get his friend’s ball back, and he said he’d get in instead of the friend—but once the ball was out, Dean was stuck and his friend (“Patrick?” asked Dean. “Yes, alright, Patrick,” agreed Mary. “Yeah,” Dean said. “Patrick would definitely drop his ball an’ make me get it.”) couldn’t get him out again. Both boys had been scared because of the thunderstorm, but the boy with the wings appeared, having heard their cries and flew down into the hole to get Dean out, and all three boys had played with the ball together. And Angel could always get it if it fell into the hole or they threw it too high. Dean had liked that one, and after that, Mary alternated who was saving whom. And many times, the boys ended up saving each other. 

John sometimes muttered darkly about Dean’s penchant for dressing up and playing house, but Mary would kiss him on the cheek and say that he spends just as much time in the garage with John than in a play kitchen at daycare, and if he knows how to fix a car and bake some cookies then that’s all the better. He protested sometimes about the dresses and hats that the daycare instructor showed him pictures of sometimes, but Mary would start to get annoyed at that point. “John’s he’s three. He plays with trucks and guns too. He plays at _crashing_ trucks and he plays cops and robbers and cowboys and Indians and you don’t see me complaining that he’s going to grow up to be a horse thief or a murderer. He’s playing. Let him be. If you keep trying to get him to stop playing he won’t get a chance to see who he can be.” She patted his cheek, or sometimes hit him in the arm, depending on how much John had annoyed her. “And you’d better love him even if he does decide he wants to wear a dress to prom or you’ll have to find yourself somewhere else to sleep.” That usually shut him up.

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It had been almost three months since she’d first seen Angel, lying quivering and hurt in the center of the cage. She was growing concerned that he was forgetting what had come before. He’d used to talk sometimes, haltingly, of a brother with laughing eyes and a sister with fire for hair, but he never mentioned them anymore. She’d asked, recently, and he’d shrugged, and said it was hard to see them, or remember. He didn’t remember grass or sun or water in a stream, so she told him stories about them so he’d remember, and he seemed to enjoy them, but Mary didn’t think he really remembered them much at all. 

So she was growing concerned. However, that concern was forgotten rather abruptly at the end of August, when she realized that she had missed her period two months running and did a pregnancy test.

It came back positive.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Did you guess??  
> Baby Sammy on the way.  
> Yay! I actually did work out a timeline for it.
> 
> Angel(Castiel) was taken in April (probably of 1982, but I'm sort of going all over the place with the timeline. Year isn't really important. Except that Mary uses a Poloroid camera, but hey, those are always gonna be cool)  
> Dean was born January 24 and Sam on May 2, four years and 4(ish) months later.  
> Dean and Angel are both three when the fic starts.   
> Mary realizes she is pregnant at the end of August, which means she conceived in the beginning of July, and missed 2 periods. This will put Dean at 4 yrs and 4 months (almost) when Sam is born in May. BOOM.
> 
> Also, the next chapter is either the last, or more probably, second from last, in this fic.   
> And then the story I originally planned to write will come! 
> 
> Seriously though, originally, this was going to be chapter one of the original story (which is planned out in outline form, if not written out yet). But this seriously got away from me. And hey, I've written it all in a day so far! Not bad!
> 
> Though, obviously unbeta'd. All mistakes are my own, so...do feel free to point them out, I'll fix them.


	4. Opposites

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> So. Um. Yes. This chapter has...everything really.  
> Fluff. Angst. Birth. Death.  
> Stuff happens.  
> Don't say I didn't warn you.  
> Because I did.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> seriously, mind the tags.

Neither Angel nor Dean fully understood what it meant that Mary was going to have a baby. Dean understood that he’d have a little brother or sister, and he was already choosing names. He was playing hard for Batman or Awesome Ranger, because, Mary thought, he thought that was one of the power rangers. Granted, for all she’d seen of the show, it could be. She’d thought they were named for their colors though. But Dean had just learned the word ‘Awesome,’ and he said it all the time. Hopefully he would grow out of it.

Angel had even less of an idea about what it meant. He stared suspiciously at her stomach, and declared he didn’t see anything, and he’d poked her a few times, to see if he could feel it. He couldn’t. “It’s not a person yet,” she said. “It’s a lot of cells, that’s all. It’ll be too small to see or feel for a while yet. Several months at least.” Angel hadn’t been convinced, and spent the majority of the week checking her stomach several times a day to see if he could hear it yet. 

Though, to be fair, John had touched her stomach with a stupid grin more often since hearing the news too. 

One day though, Angel asked her if she wanted his blood. Mary had been horrified. “Why?” she demanded.

“’Cause they take it all the time,” he said. “Little bottles.” He held his hands about two inches apart to show how little. “They take it an ‘spec’ it ‘cause they say it’s special. Cause of I don’t get sick no matter what they put in my food.” Mary had been livid, even if Angel didn’t seem to have any idea what he was talking about. “So you can have some. I’ll tell ‘em to give it to you when they take it next time, an’ you can have it so the baby is not sick.” 

“Where’d you hear the baby was going to be sick?” she asked, faintly. 

Angel had shrugged. “Shark-Lilith says babies die a lot. An’ get sick. An’ she told you you’d hafta take a sick leave,” he frowned. “I heared her say it. I wasn’t s’posed to, but I did. An’ I don’t want you to leave.”

“Oh, Angel, baby, I’m going to have to. It won’t be for a while, but right before the baby comes, I’ll have to take a few weeks off. I’ll stay just as long as I can though,” she said. “And come back quick. But you don’t have to worry about it for months and months yet.” 

He had paused, considering this, and then went to fetch the calendar that was next to his blanket. They were currently working on telling the passage of time. Everything from seconds to years. She’d asked him how old he was, and he’d just stared at her blankly, then shrugged as if it didn’t matter. She’d decided then and there to just tell him he was three, and had been in the cage for less than a year, which had led to the conversation about months and years and how they were different. He was having a much harder time with telling time than he had with words. 

But he brought the calendar to her, and demanded she show him on it when she’d be gone. Mary did warn him she couldn’t be exact, but she pointed out May 1st as her due date, and the whole week before, and most of the weeks after. It would be more than a whole _month_ that he wouldn’t see her. When he realized that he’d burst into tears, and been nearly inconsolable, for almost half an hour until she managed to point out that there was still a good seven months until then. Still, he seemed to not want to think about it, and she caught him glaring at her stomach sometimes. 

Mary ached for Angel, but still couldn’t figure out how to get him out of the Facility. Lilith had merely shrugged when Mary had accused her of poisoning Angel’s food, and said that she wasn’t in charge of his physical testing anymore, it was Alistair, and Azazel, her right hand man, now. Mary had never met Azazel before, but somehow, he gave her a creepy feeling of déjà vu. She didn’t like the way he looked at her. It wasn’t…exactly sexual. More…predatory. 

He did admit to injecting strains of various diseases into Angel’s apples and some of his stews though. He had been ever since he took over. He had been told to figure out if he got sick without hurting the creature, so he’d done as instructed. He did agree to stop. “Only for the baby,” he said, nodding at her. “Don’t want you eating something you shouldn’t.” His cool voice unnerved her, and she placed her hands over her stomach automatically, though she kicked herself immediately at the smirk he gave her. 

She hurried away before she remembered to wonder how he’d known. Though that mystery was easily solved. Somehow everyone knew. Perhaps Angel had mentioned it. Or Bela. Mary hadn’t seen much of Bela, recently, but the other woman had come in to clean out Angel’s toilet (with great disgust, as ever), when Angel had been trying to determine where he’d be able to see the baby first, and so Mary had told the younger woman, who had nodded and congratulated her. Whilst managing to get in a jibe about how now Mary at least had an excuse to lose her girlish figure and left while Mary was still trying to figure out if Bela had just called her fat or not. _That must be it_ she told herself. _Bela told everyone._ God she was getting paranoid. Perhaps she’d been in the business too long. Mary sighed. Well, now she had to stay. For Angel, if nothing else.

Angel was almost the whole way through the third Narnia book, and enjoying it even more than the other two. He loved Shasta. And the relationship he had with the girl. Though he didn’t understand why they were not yet together, since they seemed to be very deeply in love. Mary wasn’t sure where he had figured out anything about love, but he was adamant. Mary decided she probably shouldn’t have read him the fairy tales. Though, she had read the Grimm versions after he’d thought the Disney-fied ones were too silly. Dean had loved the Disney versions though, and had been horrified at the Grimm versions when she’d dared read one to him. Angel liked them, mostly because the things that happened in the fairy tales were worse than what was happening to him, and he liked to think he wasn’t the worst one off. Which…for a three year old, Mary figured was rather pragmatic.

He was also learning French, which surprised him. But one day, when she was running late, she hurried in to see Bela, shoving the breakfast towards him with the claw (she still didn’t like getting in the cage with him), and talking to him in French, and Angel replying to her in the same language. Bela didn’t seem phased by this, so it must have happened before. Angel’s accent was better than Bela’s was though. When the other woman left, Mary raised her eyebrows. “How long have you been having these conversations with Bela?” she asked. Angel had squinted, his entire face constricting as he thought. 

“A month?” he said, questioning. “She said a bad word, an’ I tol’ her it was a bad word an’ she said I didn’t know what it meant, and I said I did _so_ an’ I tol’ her what it meant an’ she went a sort of funny color. White an’ then sorta blotchy an’ spotty an’ she left quick, but then she came back an’ she said some more things, an’ I knew what they meant too, but I wasn’t so good at talkin’ so she helped me. Like you did.” He started munching happily away on his fruit (orange, today), and Mary suddenly felt rather jealous. She shouldn’t. If Angel wanted to learn languages, he damn well should, and it was best to start early, but….Bela had been teaching him. She didn’t even _like_ Angel, so far as Mary knew. Angel seemed to sense her distress, and patted her leg. 

“She doesn’t get in the cage,” he said. “An’ she doesn’t give me things or touch my hair,” he told Mary, who went from jealous to very nearly weepy in a matter of seconds. Damn hormones, she thought. She saw Angel blink a few times, as if struck by a thought, and then he seemed to dismiss it, and went back to his meal.

In the next few weeks, Mary convinced Bela to get some language books for Angel. “You don’t have to teach him. Just…give him the books. Let him do it.” Bela said she’d think about it, but when he was finished with ‘A Horse and His Boy,’ Bela brought the practice book with a few vocab sheets she’d printed out as well. She wasn’t sure if Lilith counted the French book as one of the two books Angel was allowed to have. So she’d printed some lists and things out from other books she’d used as a child, and shoved them into the main book before giving it to Angel. Mary had been rather impressed, but Bela had glared at her so intensely that Mary thought she might spontaneously combust, and said nothing about what she suspected of Bela’s heart. Still. She kept it in mind. It might be useful to have Bela keep an eye on Angel while she was on leave. 

Mary grew steadily bigger and bigger, and both Dean and Angel were astounded. Angel was glad there was finally something to see, some proof of what she said was true about why she was going away (which he still didn’t like thinking about). Dean was coming up with more and more ridiculous names. The only one she didn’t find funny was his suggestion of Angel. John had asked ‘what if it is a boy?’ and Dean had merely looked down his nose at his father (where had he learned _that_ expression?) and said rather imperiously that Angel could be a boy’s name too.

John thought that was stupid, but Dean had grown upset, stamping his foot and saying that mom’s Angel was always a boy, and John had looked surprised at his wife, over the head of a furious four year-old. Mary had shrugged. “His bedtime stories,” she said. “There’s a boy with wings. He’s called Angel.” John had scoffed a little, but didn’t say anything else, which was good because Mary had a book in her hands and a look in her eye that meant she was about thirty seconds from throwing the book directly at her husband’s head. 

Dean had laughed and said it was disgusting when she ate celery with ice cream or an éclair with ketchup. He’d been fascinated, but horrified by both. Angel, when she told him about cravings, had merely stared at her for a long time and said ‘okay.’ It had taken her till she got home that night to realize that the boy had basically no idea what any of those foods even were. He might’ve read about ice cream or éclairs or ketchup…and he might have eaten celery, but he had no real frame of reference for knowing that the things she mentioned don’t usually mix. Maybe they could get him some ice cream.  
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Lilith said absolutely not to the ice cream idea. “It is a _monster_ Mary,” she said. “I am tired of telling you time and again. I have allowed you to teach it, to coddle it, but you do not need to…spoil it. I don’t care how cute it is. That fluffy little winged freak is not a human little boy. It doesn’t need sweets.” Mary had left feeling close to tears, and blaming everything on hormones. She’d known that Lilith would say no. She shouldn’t have allowed herself to hope. At least she hadn’t promised Angel anything. That would be…awful. 

A few days before Mary had take her maternity leave, she found Angel looking a little numb in the cage. "What is it sweetie?" she asked, concerned. He'd blinked up at her, silent for several long moments.  
"I have been here a year," he said, as if he couldn't believe it. "I'm older, he said." Mary had smoothed his hair back from his forehead.  
"You're four now," she said. He just nodded.  
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She took another picture with Angel before she left, this one with him touching her stomach with one hand and her arm wrapped around his waist. This time, Bela took it. Mary also gave him a picture with her and Dean. Her shirt was rolled up a little and Dean was kissing her stomach.

“We are naming the baby after my grandfather,” she told Angel. “Samuel, if it’s a boy. Samantha, if it’s a girl. Dean just calls it Sammy.” She laughed. He sang to it all the time too. All sorts of songs. The ABC’s and the Beatles and sometimes Disney songs. He sang ‘You Are My Sunshine,’ to the baby too, she told Angel. He considered this, and asked her how that one went. Mary felt almost about to cry again, but she was about to leave for the next month. Angel knew it, even if he didn’t like it or fully understand. So she wrapped him in the blanket and leaned him against her side, trying (and mostly not succeeding) in smashing Angel’s wings, but he didn’t seem to mind. She ran her fingers through his hair (getting long, she’d have to cut it when she got back), and started to sing.

_You are my sunshine_  
My only sunshine  
You make me happy  
When skies are grey.  
You’ll never know dear  
How much I love you.  
Please don’t take, my sunshine away.   
“There are more verses,” she started to say, but Angel was already almost asleep. He must have been exhausted. She carefully moved away. “Sleep well, sunshine,” she murmured.

“It’s okay,” he mumbled. “I know ‘s’only a song. Not a sunshine.” She wanted to protest, to tell him that was false, but he was already asleep. So she sang it again, and hoped to God that somewhere, even subconsciously, Angel heard her.  
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Samuel Winchester was born on May second, at 3:42 p.m.  
A call was made almost the moment it happened.  
A woman with a shark-like grin smiled.  
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Life without Mary was not fun for Angel. Bela was…okay, he supposed. But she didn’t get in the cage, and she didn’t talk to him about much of anything. Sometimes she spoke to him in French, but she didn’t really say nice things. She called him a monster, and laughed when he told her that he was a boy. The only personal thing she said was that her step-dad and her mother had been monsters that looked like people too, just like him. And neither of them had started out that way. They’d been nice, like him. But she didn’t trust monsters at all. No matter what they looked like. Angel thought that didn’t sound right. But if they really had been monsters and hurt her….he shivered. Alistair and Azazel, whom he saw every day now that Mary wasn’t teaching him, told him all about monsters. A different sort of education, Azazel called it. 

He learned about what monsters did to humans. They showed him horrible pictures and sometimes, Alistair made him come to the morgue so he could see what it really looked like. His stomach had flipped when Alistair showed him the destroyed body. He felt the food in his stomach want to come back out his mouth again. That was wrong, so he turned away and tried to block out the sight, the smell. Alistair had just laughed before dragging him by the chain back to the cage. Mary always held his hand. No one else wanted to touch him. 

He was told how to kill all sorts of monsters. Monsters that looked like people and monsters that didn’t. He was told that many of them lived right here in the Facility. “Will they eat me?” he squeaked. Alistair had poked him with his long metal prod that he’d designed just so he could reach Angel when he stood in the middle of the cage to try and avoid their reach. 

“Of course not,” said Alistair, grinning. “You’re a monster too.” 

“I’m just a boy!” he insisted. “Just a small boy!”

Alistair had jabbed him hard, again, and he cried out as the metal bruised his ribs. 

“You’re a dirty monster freak,” he hissed. “And soon, you’ll remember it.” 

After that, no one had come for two days. And Bela didn’t bring back the toilet for him to use. When they’d finally come for him, he’d broken and just gone to the bathroom in the corner, and hunkered, miserable in the center of the cage. 

They’d taken him back to the Post for that. They said he was acting like a dirty animal. They’d cleaned the cage too, and he’d been terrified that they would have destroyed his books, or the photos, but they hadn’t. Half the cage was wet, but the other was bone dry, and that’s where the photos, the books, and the blanket were. 

But he knew they wouldn’t be safe forever. He needed a place to keep them safe. Maybe he could ask Mary, when she got back. Something he could hide on his person. Or…somewhere in the cage perhaps. The photos were all carefully stuck in the dictionary, so all he really needed was a place to keep that. He’d like to keep Goodnight Moon too, but he had it memorized. If it came down to it, so long as he had the dictionary and the photos….well. The photos. He needed to keep the photos more than anything else.  
*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&**&*&*&*&*  
Mary, John, and Dean Winchester welcomed Sam home two days after he was born. Dean checked on several occasions that they could not and would not put his baby brother back, and that no one was going to take him away. He was reassured each time. Still, he checked in on his brother often, coming straight in from daycare to hurry to wherever his brother was. With his mother, or in his crib, generally. Once with John. But that was only once. 

Dean was surprised by how quickly Sammy grew. On the day before Mary went back to work, she took two pictures of Dean with Sam. One she gave to Dean. The other she took with her in her bag. She wanted to show Angel. She almost considered the boy family himself. Just like her Dean. She hadn’t told him that, and she hadn’t told her family about him, except for Dean, in stories. Maybe one day she’d be able to introduce them. She hoped so. 

Bela had kept her appraised of…most of the goings on at the Facility. Her reports were not detailed and they were not encouraging. To be fair, Bela did have other jobs at the moment, Angel wasn’t the only monster she was observing, unlike Mary. But some of her reports were disturbing. -- U009WC2B was insolent, received discipline.  
\--Cleaned the cage of U009WC2B. Ensured ‘personal’ effects remained dry.  
\-- U009WC2B not sleeping. Found photos of werewolf kills and a hunter kill of a vampire in the cage. U009WC2B claims New Education.

Mary was less than impressed. Apparently, during her absence, Lilith and Alistair had started trying to torture Angel again, and Bela only ever called him by his Company designation. Mary didn’t want him to forget that he was Angel, that he was good. Not a monster at all. 

He did look a bit thinner, a bit more tired when she saw him. But he smiled when she came in. He took the photograph of Dean and baby Sam reverently and put it with his other things. He asked her, before she left, if there was something he could use to hide his things in, if he had to. 

“I’ll think of something,” she promised. And she did, when she was placing a little hat on Sam’s head, she thought of it. The next day, she visited Lilith, and said that U009WC2B was outgrowing his trousers, that he needed a new pair. Lilith shrugged, and gestured. They didn’t have many small pairs of the trousers, as mostly, all the monsters wearing the pants at all were adults. But there were a few small pairs. Mary wondered when they had been made. Lilith didn’t say. But she took the pants home with her that night, and carefully sewed one of the stretchy little hats into the front of the pants. It made a handy little pocket to hide small things in. “It won’t hide the books, she said quietly. “But it’ll keep the photos safe. And there’s a needle and a bit of thread, for when you outgrow _these_ pants.” The hat even had a little snap, so he could snap it closed and be sure the pictures, or the needle and thread, wouldn’t fall out. 

The routine began again. Mary giving Angel lessons; telling time, English, History, and now she added monsters as well. She wanted Angel to get the full story, not the nightmares that Alistair and Azazel told him. “They aren’t pretty stories,” she said. “But Monsters aren’t pretty. I’ve learned…you aren’t born a monster. You become one. Only you can stop yourself from being a monster, Angel.”

He had nodded seriously, and thrown himself into learning about the monsters of the myths with as much intensity as he did everything else, if not more. He was determined not to become a monster. Mary wondered if she should tell him about human monsters as well as the supernatural ones. No, she thought. That’ll just confuse him. She’d wait.

Angel was nearly as fluent in French as he was in English, Bela said. If he wanted to learn a different language, he had to look to someone else. Mary didn’t know any but English, except some Latin and some rudimentary Spanish. She didn’t want to teach him the Latin though. All she knew were exorcisms. And she was years and _years_ out of practice with them. 

She appealed to Lilith, who was unwilling at first, but finally relented when reminded that they needed to test the limits of the monster’s mind as well as his form. Lilith thought that if it weren’t Mary Winchester making the requests, she’d probably do it herself. She was curious to see how clever the little ‘Angel’ really was. She didn’t say this, of course. But she did get in a German who usually worked mostly with vampires. He agreed to teach the winged freak his native language. So long as he didn’t butcher it, the man had added with a sniff.

Two weeks later he was still teaching Angel German, and had even spent an extra hour, usually after Mary had left, to give him extra practice. Lilith started Angel on learning other things too. Mary thought it was too much too soon, but Lilith smirked, and reminded her of mental limits, and so Angel started learning basic botany and astronomy. He loved learning about space. He was fascinated by it, and Mary wished she’d remembered to give him that book about the moon she’d promised him shortly after he’d arrived at the Company Facility. He’d never mentioned it of course, but she could see now how much he would have loved it . If it was for learning, Lilith decided, he was allowed more than one book. So long as he was using it daily, and beyond just the lesson time. Fiction still had a limit. Never more than two. Right now it was the sixth Narnia book, and one Mary called Twelfth Night, that was a play. He was enjoying both almost as much as he was the lessons about astronomy. 

The day after Halloween, Mary proudly showed Angel a photo of Dean as a…Angel tilted his head to try and make it out. Mary had laughed when he failed. “It’s Angel Batman,” she said. John had been horrified, Mary touched and amused, and mostly all the neighbors had been confused, amused, and a bit disturbed all at once. At least, until Mary told them that no, Dean didn’t think Batman was dead, but she told him stories about an Angel sometimes, and he wanted him to be part of the costume. And he wanted to be Batman. So he was both. Sam was in the picture too, staring up at his dramatically posed big brother like he couldn’t decide to eat him or cry. Sam was dressed as a….”dog,” Mary informed Angel when he couldn’t figure that one out either.

“I would like to be a batman,” he decided. “I have real wings. I could be an angel Batman too.” Mary nodded. 

“Maybe next Halloween.” Angel had been satisfied by that, and Mary’s heart ached for him. Perhaps she should stop trying to share the outside world with him. He only wanted a taste of it. He spent the rest of the day with her, outside of lessons, leaping around the cage, wings spread wide, crying out, “Angel Batman!” and scooping up the space book before throwing it to the ground again so he could ‘rescue’ it again later.

*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*  
It was nearly Thanksgiving, when Mary was roused from her bed by Sam’s crying. She turned to John to get him to take care of the baby, but John wasn’t there. He must have fallen asleep watching the game. Again. She yawned and padded to the bedroom. Sam wasn’t crying anymore. “John?” she asked. The shadowed figure by the crib, raised a finger to his mouth. “Shhhhhh.”  
Well. At least she could turn off the television, she thought, heading down the stairs. She stopped then, frozen. Because John was in the chair, asleep in front of the television. She ran back up the stairs, hardly able to breathe. 

A few minutes later, the nursery burst into flames, and a broken and horrified family watched as the house in which they were making their life burned. John Winchester, held Dean, who clutched at his baby brother, and tried not to cry.

*&*&*&*&*&*&&&&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&

Angel was woken by a sharp yank on his collar, something that hadn’t happened in months. “Well, hello, freak,” said Alistair. “Mother Mary isn’t coming back. That means you are all mine.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So. Um. Sorry. Really. 
> 
> One more chapter in this prequel story, and then, on to the main event! 
> 
> I wish I could have left Mary alive, but...it would totally throw off the whole....everything in the story I want. And I wanted to keep it close to canon.
> 
> Though...plus side...more than 17000 words today! And this story just sort of happened. I've been writing off and on since...hell. I guess I've been writing off and on for about 12 hours straight then. And I got shit DONE. Okay. That's all. bye. And...see you for the last chapter tomorrow.


	5. After

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The aftermath of Mary's death.  
> You see a tiny bit of Winchester here, but mostly it is focused on Angel. 
> 
> I guess there's less dialogue in this chapter. But it's mostly just wrapping up the story and preparing for the next installment in the series.
> 
> And hey, for a story that started yesterday and just sort of...happened, it's not too shabby.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings again. Torture, though it isn't all that graphic, except that it is happening to a child.   
> Mental abuse too. They really do a number on his head.

Dean woke up gasping every night. Sometimes more than once. He always checked on Sam immediately. John was at a loss for what to do. He didn’t know what had killed his wife, why she’d been on the ceiling. He didn’t think Dean had seen….but Dean checked on Sam every night, pale and shaking. He didn’t speak, and that was horrifying to John more than anything. 

Finding the psychic was…a surprise. She told him of monsters. Of a Company that collected them for study, and of Hunters that killed them. “Mary worked at the Company, honey,” she said. “The main Facility is just on the other side of the woods, there.” He’d known where she worked. He hadn’t known what she did.

“She said…animals,” he said, hoarsely. “She worked with animals.”  
“I suppose, in a way she did,” said the psychic. “At least, it would have seemed like it to her.”

John packed up his bags, and shoved Sam and Dean’s (mostly donated) new clothes into another bag. “We’re going on a trip,” he told Dean. “We’re gonna find what killed your mom.” 

He had both of them in the car, and he made a pitstop at Bobby’s. Bobby lived on the outskirts of town, and he owned the Salvage Yard. He and John had often done a lot of work together, with John fixing cars and Bobby either fixing them or breaking them down for parts, whichever was needed. 

“You complete….you cannot take a traumatized four-year-old and a six month old on a revenge road trip John!” Bobby was furious. 

‘I think I-“ began John coldly.

“ _No_ ” growled Bobby. “Come on John, don’t be an idiot. Stay here for a bit, and if you want to go tearing off on a wild goose chase to find some monster or other, then leave the boys here.”

“You knew about monsters?” demanded John.

“Of course,” sighed Bobby. “My wife…she was killed by one. I’ve done some research but…I’m not gonna go hunt all the other sumbitches down. I mean…I did, for a bit, but I didn’t have kids, John.”

John was not pleased. His wife had lied to him for as long as she had known him. His best friend had done the same. “I can’t believe you,” he seethed. “You lie to me? Mary lies to me, and it’s her damn job that gets her killed and you don’t want me to avenge her?”

“I didn’t say that,” said Bobby. “But you go down that road, you’ll leave your boys wantin’ a father as well as a mom. Leave ‘em here, John. For a bit. You…get it out of your system and I’ll take care of things here. They know me. They like me. Give ‘em…a bit of normalcy. But for god’s sakes, John. Dean still ain’t talking! If you leave now, he might…I dunno. Just…give it a little longer, alright?”

It seemed to take a lot out of him, but eventually, John acquiesced. He spent his time at Bobby’s divided between trying to make his sons comfortable, and researching monsters. Bobby had a lot of books that John had never noticed before. John had been in the marines. He was a good fighter, even if he was a bit out of practice. 

Dean slowly began talking again. Quietly, mostly only to Sam, but eventually to John, and to Bobby. Bobby suggested taking him back the preschool he’d started at the beginning of the year. “It’s only a few hours, and they’ll be havin’ a party,” he said. “He’s a kid. Let him be a kid.” 

As it turned out, it was a good idea. Dean relaxed more fully at the party than John had seen him in weeks. And if John stayed the entire time, the teacher at least understood, and Dean seemed grateful for it too. He glanced over every few minutes at his father, and brought him food sometimes. He fell asleep on the way home. 

John left shortly after New Year’s. Dean had been going back to school regularly for about a week, and Bobby had been the one taking him. He didn’t think Bobby really approved of his leaving, but John didn’t live for Bobby’s approval. 

He drove up to the Facility first, just to get a look. There wasn’t a path through the woods, which would have made it take a lot shorter, in the car. As it was, the path to it was winding and long, and it took about an hour to drive around to get to the parking lot. He knew Mary had complained about the drive several times, but he had thought she’d been exaggerating. “Sorry, Mary,” he whispered. He felt his fingers clench into fists as he glared up at the stark grey building. He would find what killed Mary, and he would kill it. And then he’d come back here, and kill every monster in this place. Studying them wouldn’t help. They were monsters. They had to die. 

 

For several weeks after John left, Dean waited every day at the window. Bobby explained to him that John was going to come back, but it was hard to say when. Eventually, Dean stopped watching. He went to school and he played with his brother. He seemed to be doing better. 

John did come back. Sometimes he came back beaten, but he did return every few weeks at least, to check on his sons, to get some more research done. John started teaching Dean about guns. About monsters. Bobby disapproved, but John always said “I’m his father, Bobby. Me. I know what’s best for my son. And I am not gonna lie to him like you and Mary did to me. It’s dangerous and he needs to be able to protect himself and Sammy.”   
Every time he left, John told Dean, “look after Sammy.” And Dean took that to heart. Bobby tried to make Dean do other things, but the boy was stubborn, and he learned about guns so he could impress his dad when the man eventually came home. He watched Sam like a hawk, making sure he ate and had clean diapers and toys and everything else he could think of. 

Come spring, Bobby signed Dean up for little league, which ended up being a brilliant plan because it got Dean out of the house, allowed him to have fun, and ‘improved his hunting skills.’ Bobby was still pleased with himself for coming up with that. Dean had been worried that John would think he didn’t care about hunting. Bobby had told him all about ghosts then, and swinging an iron bat to get rid of them. He also told of him of the merit of being able to catch fast moving projectiles (though, he added, if you don’t have the proper equipment, you have to get out of the way, but either way, this will help you see it coming). So Dean happily joined the little league (well, t-ball) team, and John was glad that Dean could do a little something normal. 

Bobby taught both boys, when they were older, how to hunt animals in the woods. Deer and rabbits mostly. He also warned them how to avoid bears and wolves, but he did tell them how to kill them if they absolutely had to do it. Or at least to scare it away. 

Dean had very few pictures of his mother that had escaped the fire. There were a few Polaroid’s that he stared at sometimes. His mom and him and Sam, him and his mom, a photo of the entire family outside their house. But that was it. Three pictures. He didn’t want to forget her. Her memory insisted on slipping away anyway.

*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*

Angel didn’t believe Alistair. “You’re _lying_ ” he said. “She’s comin’ back, she promised to tell me ‘bout Thanksgiving. An’ the Indians and pilgrims an’ the rock they ate at. The pilgrim rock. “ 

Alistair just laughed. “Mary hates you,” he said. “You’re a monster. She has her own, _human_ children to love.”

“No!” Angel cried out. “That’s not true. She doesn’t hate me an’ she’s coming back!” 

Alistair yanked the chain, forcing Angel to his knees. “You’ll never see her again,” he hissed before sauntering out of the room. 

And Bela brought his breakfast, and said nothing but a passing ‘hello monster’ in French and left him to eat it. No one came for him. Bela took the toilet and the empty breakfast with her when she came back with lunch. And still, no one came. Mary didn’t come. But she always came. Except…when she had her baby. And some weekends. But she had warned him about the baby. And it wasn’t a weekend. Maybe she was sick, he thought, desperately. She’s sick and couldn’t come, but she’ll be back tomorrow.

But she didn’t come back the next day. Or the day after. For more than a week, the only person he saw was Bela. The last day, Bela shifted her weight slightly. “I won’t be coming back anymore,” she said. 

“You hate me too,” he replied dully. 

“I don’t like you,” agreed Bela. “But…okay, look. It wasn’t fair of them to tell you Mary hated you. She didn’t. She died. There was a fire, and she died. I’m only telling you because Mary helped me once. A long time ago.” She left, then, leaving Angel stunned and feeling like his stomach was flipping over on itself. Mary was dead. She had died horribly and painfully and she wasn’t ever coming back. Not because she was mad at him, but because she couldn’t. He cried for the first time in a long time that night, holding the blanket she’d given him. He had pictures. He had books. And he knew that any of them could be taken away at anytime. He had nothing. Not even Mary.

The next day, it was apparently decided that he’d had enough of being basically ignored. Azazel returned, looking incredibly pleased with himself. “Your physical training begins today,” he said. “Your mornings belong to me.” 

Azazel didn’t like it when Angel didn’t do things well. If he couldn’t do push ups or sit ups—not correctly, or not enough—the man would hit him, and make him keep trying. As he got more and more tired, his performance suffered more, which generally led to a lot of bruises. He was made to show how well he could climb, how long he could hold on to a metal bar, climb ropes. Lilith made a joke about boot camp once when she came to see how he was doing. Angel didn’t know what she meant. He’d never been to camp, and he didn’t own any boots. Mary would have explained. Lilith slapped his face so hard it left a bruise on his cheek in the shape of a hand and he heard something in his neck pop. She told him not to speak unless he was spoken to first. 

He couldn’t fly yet, but that didn’t stop them trying to make him do it anyway. They did keep him chained for it, but they always chained him around the neck. He was pretty sure that once he nearly broke it. After that, he always held onto the chain with his hands when they pushed him off anything high. It usually meant he hurt pretty badly when he crashed to the floor, but at least his neck felt okay. Sore, but not too painful. 

He still had lessons every day. But now there was a sort of fear that went along with them. He had to do well in the physical lessons, as well as the school lessons because if he didn’t…the lessons he liked were taken away and replaced with sessions with Alistair. He’d be tied down in that horrible white room and the man would cut him. Or burn him. Or half drown him. All in the name of ‘testing,’ the man said. How much he bled and how fast he clotted. What substances burned better than others. If there was any sort of metal that hurt him worse than others. How long he could hold his breath. There were other tests too, if he did poorly. They wanted to see how long he could go without sleep before it started making him go crazy. How long he could go without food before his body started shutting down. 

He wasn’t sure how much time passed anymore, because they took away the clock in the cage-room, and the calendar he had was out of date. And they never told him what day it was, or what month or what year. 

When his fluffy feathers started falling out, he panicked, until he saw that there were a few long, sleek feathers in their place. He was growing his first flight feathers. It sort of hurt too, because not only were his feathers growing, the bones of his wings grew too. Everything was growing, he noticed one day after the horrible Post-shower. They still mostly let him bathe, but he was back to having to use the toilet only once a day, and he had to use the pail again, though they did give him paper to clean himself with. He didn’t have to get cleaned off at the Post every day, but it happened at least once a week. But he still only had one pair of trousers, and the one blanket, so he still preferred letting himself air dry after these baths or showers before he put the trousers back on. And one day, he found that they were higher than his ankles, even when he pulled them down almost off his hips. 

They gave him a new pair on the day he flew for the first time. It wasn’t far, but he had gotten airborne and stayed that way for about half a minute. “Tomorrow we’ll go high again,” they said. 

He wasn’t sure how the Facility was shaped really. He knew the way to his cage from the white room, and from the dark room where they let him bathe. He knew the way, now, to the huge gym-room that Azazel took him to do his physical lessons and to fly. That room was massive. They had to go down in a box (and the numbers went down quite far too) and entered into a room huge rectangular room. There was an oval that went all the way around the room, which Azazel made him run on. Apparently, once around it was a quarter of a mile. There were ropes in one corner that hung from the ceiling that Azazel said went up to the top of the building. There were twenty stories apparently, though he didn’t explain what he meant by that properly. Angel decided he meant floors.

There was an interesting device against one wall, that also went the whole way to the top, but it had little protrusions. Azazel called it a rock wall, and made him climb that too. 

There were lots of places where there were weights and machines to test strength and ones to test agility that Azazel said were gymnastic equipment. There was always something new to see, in the gym. 

When they arrived there, every day, Angel’s walking-chain was clipped to another chain that hung from a track on the ceiling. It allowed him to go anywhere in the room, so long as he followed the track. 

When his flight feathers all came in, and he could fly a bit from the ground Azazel would give him ‘goals.’ He had to climb halfway up the rock wall and jump off, and fly down. Azazel seemed to be the only one that didn’t expect him to be perfect right away. He was still quite harsh when Angel did poorly, but he didn’t try to make him fly around the room, like Lilith suggested. 

One day, strapped to the table, shaking with pain as Alistair cut a design with a silver knife into his side, the man told him he had been with them for three years. That didn’t mean much to Angel. Just three years of…. _this_. He didn’t remember much about before the Cage anyway. Sometimes he dreamed of grass beneath his feet, or of a young boy’s laugh, but the memories were far away and felt more like dreams. He remembered Mary though. He remembered her clearly, and he missed her dreadfully. He even missed Bela, but according to the small woman teaching him Chinese, Bela didn’t work here anymore at all. 

The biggest mistake that he ever made though, was shortly after Alistair had told him that he’d been here three years. He’d just undergone a truly brutal physical lesson, and had screamed at Azazel that he shouldn’t even _be_ here, that he was a person, not a monster and he hadn’t done anything wrong. 

There had been a beating for that, and then he was dragged, roughly to his cage. Not long after that, Lilith arrived, a short white dress making her pale skin look a bit darker. She had a full length mirror with her, and she dragged Angel out of the cage with the chain without speaking. She held the chain close to the collar, and forced him to look in the mirror. 

“What do you see?” she asked, quietly.

“A boy,” he said. “And a woman.” She jerked the chain, making him choke. He was skinny, with bruises and cuts and scars, though not as many as he’d expected, considering the amount of times Alistair had cut into him. Most of the scars were fading anyway. 

“What do you see?” she asked again. 

“Me,” he gasped. “An’ you.” 

“No!” She actually yelled it. Angel wasn’t sure he’d ever heard her yell before. “Wings. See that?” She yanked on one, hard, moving his whole body and tearing out a few feathers in the process. He yelled with pain. She shoved the feathers in his face. “It hurt you for me to pull them out,” she said. “They are part of you. You have wings.” She tapped a long finger nail into the small muscle just below his chest. “You have a whole different musculature than a human person. Alistair, take off your shirt.” The man hesitated, but did so. He was sort of scrawny. And ugly. And hairy. Angel made a face. Would he look like that too? “Look,” hissed Lilith. “He’s got one set of muscles where you have two. Does that look human to you?” He wasn’t used to anything else. He’d never seen a human with their shirt off. “You are a monster,” she said. “A freak. You are not a person, you are so, _so_ much less than that. You are nothing. If you were a vampire you’d be dead by now. And you know why you are not? Because of these.” She pointed to the scars. “Any one of those marks would have killed a human. Any one of the times you’ve passed out because your neck…you called it popping?” she laughed. “Any one of those times would have snapped the neck of a human instantly. You aren’t dead because we haven’t figured out the easiest way to kill you.” 

Alistair sort of wanted to see if he could just cut out the boy’s heart, but Lilith said they had a reputation to maintain, and if there were more creatures like this boy, there had to be a way of killing it easily. They could probably shoot it in the head, but then it would be over too quickly, Lilith always said. And Alistair didn’t mind. He liked working with something that could heal so quickly. Made things lsat longer.

Lilith tossed Angel back into the cage. “No food. No water. No lessons. If you read, I will know it and I will burn your books and your precious photos in front of you.” She locked the cage door. “You will have your physical lessons and tests with Alistair and Azazel. The only thing you will study will by your anatomy and the anatomy of a human. You will document every. Single. Way. That you are different.” She pointed then to the small red lights blinking around the room. “Mary was very thorough in her reports. We’ve added cameras since she left. I see everything that happens in this room.” She smirked. “Have fun.”

She turned and left, Alistair and Azazel close behind.

The next week was torturous. They didn’t let him eat or sleep or drink. He had several physical sessions a day and when he passed out, they forced him awake. He had to learn about muscles and bones and blood. He was given reports that had been taken of his own. Some of it was the same. Some of it was….very different. And every time he saw Alistair or Azazel they asked the same question. “What are you?” And he replied, “I’m Angel. I’m just a boy with wings.” And they would hit him. Or cut him. Or choke him. Generally, punishment was pain. “You are a monster. A freak. You are not human. You are worth less than dirt and you’d better pray we never find another of your kind, because if we do, we will kill you.”

 

Lilith came to him at the end of the week. “A human would be dead from lack of water,” she said. “You’re just thirsty. What are you?”

“Angel,” he rasped. “I’m…person.” 

She had gotten in the cage with him, which was a surprise. She kicked him, and he lay gasping on the floor. “What are you?” she asked, and kicked him again. She had stilettos on. It hurt a lot. “What are you?” she yelled, stomping on his hand. He screamed as he felt something snap and her shoe thrust halfway through his hand.

He wasn’t really sure he even said it later, but he must have, because that day he got water. He also got a bandage for his hand, and he was allowed to read again.

“Monster.”

*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&**&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*

He didn’t believe it, really. But he had to tell her what she wanted to get what _he_ wanted. He wanted to learn to got back to physical lessons with Azazel once a day, and with Alistair once a week and his schooling every day. But every day, they’d still ask “What are you?” and he had to answer “Monster.” 

“Designation?” they’d ask him.

“U009WC2B” he’d reply. “The ninth unknown you’ve found, two wings of a birdlike classification. “

“Name?”

“Angel.” If he said that, they’d hit him. And he learned For ‘name’ they’d take ‘monster,’ ‘freak,’ ‘none,’ or ‘U009WC2B.’ Angel was the name Mary had given him, and he wasn’t deserving of a name. He was a monster. Monsters don’t get names. They had serial numbers.   
*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&**&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&*&

Years passed, as they always do, methodically, constant, unyielding. He didn’t remember a time before the Cage. He dreamed sometimes, of a laughing boy, twinkling brown eyes, flame-red hair. He dreamed, sometimes, of grass beneath his feet, a breeze in his hair, and sun warmed skin. These were just dreams, he knew. He was imagining, based on things he read. He had been in the Cage for twenty years, they told him. He was older than that, so there must have been something before…but this was all he knew.   
He had pictures: a woman that held him and smiled, blonde hair mixing with his dark hair; pictures of the woman with a man and two other boys, looking just as happy as she looked in the ones with him. He knew she wasn’t his mother. Her name was Mary, and she’d called him Angel. The other boys were Sam and Dean, and the man was John. He didn’t really remember that. But the names were written on the back of the pictures in fading pen. He’d darkened it several times over the years. He remembered that Mary had cared for him. That she had been warm and she had smoothed his hair back from his forehead and that she had liked his wings. He remembered that she had sung to him. He dreamed of the song sometimes. 

He had a bag now, and a new pair of trousers. He never took the bag off, not for anything. It had the book Goodnight Moon in it with pictures carefully pressed between the pages, a pocket dictionary, whatever fiction book he was allowed to read at the time, a needle, a tiny bit of thread. There was a hat too, with the initials S.W. sewn in black thread (his was white). A baby’s hat. Even when he had to go to the Post, he protected this bag as best he could with his body. Each item was special, and he knew that they’d take it. He wouldn’t let them. He needed each thing in the bag. He needed to remember…remember a time when he was more than just a monster, a freak with wings. And maybe…one day he could be Angel again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay so. That's the story that was always meant to be one chapter of exposition backstory! Ha! That would have been really boring and incomplete, wouldn't it?
> 
> Anyway. The original story is...outlined, if not written out.
> 
> There will be twelve chapters in it. 
> 
> I honestly, have no idea if people are reading this or like it at all. Feedback would be...good.

**Author's Note:**

> So that's Chapter One.  
> This story will basically detail Angel's interactions with Mary, and Mary's interactions with her family. It will also touch on Angel (Castiel, of course) and the things that happen in the Company that Mary is not involved in.  
> Those are things that will definitely be kind of terrible. I tagged graphic depictions of violence, not because I really imagine I'll get too bloody right away, but because when this starts, Castiel is three, and child abuse is really horrible and that is what is happening. That'll probably start next chapter, when I bring in a few things from Castiel (or, I'm going to be calling him Angel from here on outs) perspective, and continuing the story from here.  
> Next part of the series will be where he meets Dean.


End file.
